Objective: High levels of social and economic deprivation are apparent in many UK cities, where there is evidence of certain "marginalised" communities suffering disproportionately from poor nutrition, threatening health. Finding ways to engage with these communities is essential to identify strategies to optimise wellbeing and life…

The national curriculum for chemistry includes topics that have not previously been taught at secondary level. In response to requests for teacher professional learning (PL) covering these topics, a course called "Divide and Analyse" was developed. Investigations into the PL needs of chemistry teachers were carried out in conjunction…

From a perspective of social practice, learning is a socially constituted practice that is imbued with socio-culturally significant meanings and shaped by the values and norms shared within a community of learners. This focus group study examines the role of e-learning technologies in mediating the social practice of learning among coursework…

Given its importance to institutions, policy-makers and intending students, there is a surprising lack of research exploring the reasons students choose to undertake a research degree. What studies there are tend to be largely descriptive and the topic lacks a theoretically-informed framework through which student decisions can be examined and…

The quality of national examination items plays an enormous role in identifying students' competencies mastery and their difficulties. This study aims to identify the difficult items in the Junior High School Mathematics National Examination, to find the factors that cause students' difficulty and to reveal the strategies that the teachers and the…

Malaysians have long realised the importance of being competent in English as one of the success factors in attaining their future goals. However, English is taught as a second language in Malaysia, and it is not easy to teach under such a foreign context, because authentic input may not exist beyond the classroom, especially in Chinese private…

This case study of development in a technical university situates distributed leadership in higher education in an organizational perspective. Analysis of documentation from development programs and interviews with 10 faculty members showed that leadership practices were related to different institutional logics prominent in four key activities in…

The educational experiences and attainment of looked-after children and young people (LACYP) remains an issue of widespread international concern. Within the UK, children and young people in care achieve poorer educational outcomes compared to individuals not in care. Despite proliferation of research documenting the reasons for educational…

This was the first qualitative study of the inclusion of children with special needs into regular schools in Slovenia that focused on inter-professional collaboration and its contributions to the inclusion process. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with primary school teachers (N = 36) and occupational therapists (N = 9) to…

This qualitative study aims to contribute to the dearth of literature pertaining to the impact of globalisation on education in Jamaica. Focussing on the early childhood level, it outlines the perceptions of stakeholders regarding the trajectory of sector development and highlights how they have had to accommodate their practices. Teachers,…

Purpose: To examine the factors that support and hinder farmers' learning and to investigate the impact of an innovative learning program on farmers' practice change. Design/methodology/approach: Individual interviews and focus group discussions were held with 24 farmers over 20 months. Observations were made of these farmers as they participated…

This paper reports on the findings of an international comparative research project where the roles of teachers in the implementation of inclusive education in mainstream-classroom settings in South Africa and Finland were investigated. Inclusive education within this project is broadly defined as welcoming all students to general-education…

Background: Considerable numbers of young people are not meeting physical activity guidelines. Wearable fitness devices can provide opportunities for physical activity promotion. Purpose: The aim of the study was to explore whether wearable healthy lifestyle technologies impacted on adolescents' (13- to 14-year-olds) motivation for physical…

Even though peer tutors are often used in gross anatomy courses, research in the field is rather a subject of the last two decades. This is especially true about the didactical challenges these types of peer tutors experience during their tutorials and about how they are prepared for the task. The aim of the presented study was to learn about the…

Two studies aimed to document the process of preparing for and teaching collaborative education courses and to determine students' perception of collaboration and inclusion as a result of taking the course. Two sessions of collaborative teaching run by different professor dyads were studied over two 10-week quarters at a large public university.…