British Educational Research Journal最新文献

This study focuses on the adaptation of the Georgia School Personnel Survey (GSPS) to assess perceptions of school climate among Portuguese educational professionals, including teachers and support staff. Data from two samples (n₁ = 1965; n₂ = 2884) were analysed in the study. Through confirmatory factor analysis, the survey's structure was validated, revealing a second-order factor composed of six first-order dimensions. The adapted version of the GSPS exhibited high internal consistency, affirming its stability across diverse occupational and gender groups. The instrument revealed measurement invariance, ensuring its appropriateness for comparative analysis across different demographic groups. The validity evidence of the GSPS was rigorously tested through its relationships with related constructs. It demonstrated large positive correlations with job satisfaction and work engagement, and a large negative correlation with burnout, highlighting its role within the nomological network of constructs related to school climate. The results support the use of GSPS as a tool for assessing school climate within Portuguese school settings, providing key insights for school improvement initiatives. The study underscores the importance of accurate measurement of school climate to enhance the understanding of its impact on school personnel. By providing a tool with strong validity evidence, this research contributes to the ongoing efforts to improve school environments, which is fundamental for fostering staff well-being and enhancing institutional effectiveness.

A small-scale qualitative case study of students at a post-1992 university in England sought to understand the nuanced experiences of returning to face-to-face study following the pandemic. Whilst much has been written about the effects of studying online, much less is known about how students adapted once they returned to campus-based delivery. Specifically, the paper focuses on student motivations to pursue higher education, and the ways that they blended digital-learning habits learned during the pandemic with their experiences and demands of campus life in the immediate aftermath. This study expands on existing scholarship by detailing how students managed the isolation, loneliness and disrupted ‘sense of belonging’ emerging from and during pandemic-related lockdowns and online learning. We show how students returned to campus delivery invigorated and eager to immerse themselves in real-time pedagogic and extracurricular experiences. Notwithstanding the difficulties of adaptation, their hopeful narratives balance the findings of other studies that suggest students are struggling to re-engage with traditional modes of university delivery.

Classroom behaviour management is a persistent and often overwhelming challenge for novice teachers; they face frequent disruptive behaviours that they struggle to resolve effectively, which harms both the teaching process and classroom climate. This study investigates the specific strategies novice teachers use to manage behaviour, detailing what they experience, how they respond, the time each intervention takes and its impact duration. Through videotaped observations and interviews, our findings reveal that novice teachers predominantly rely on reactive strategies, commonly teacher-directed, such as directives. In contrast, they rarely use proactive, student-centred approaches, such as explanations or support. Although the directive responses provide immediate but short-term results, the less frequently used responses demonstrate more promising, longer-term impacts on student behaviour. These findings highlight the need for teacher preparation programmes and institutional support in schools to emphasise responsive, student-centred communication strategies, focusing on proactive approaches and emotional regulation skills to help teachers respond thoughtfully rather than reactively. Such support can guide novice teachers in becoming more aware of their responses and using more effective strategies for sustainable behaviour management.

There has been a proliferation of qualitative approaches to researching education. While this has resulted in the construction of a rich tapestry of knowledge about education, it has also resulted in disparate research ideas, processes and practices, and created tensions relating to what constitutes rigorous qualitative research in education. As such, the aim of this paper was to use a multidisciplinary perspective and draw on concepts and practices relating to research coherence, reflexivity, transparency, authenticity, sincerity, credibility and ethics to (1) problematise traditional approaches to rigour in qualitative education research and (2) support those who do interpretive qualitative education research to select and embed relevant concepts and practices to increase and evidence the rigour of their work. I end this paper with an attempt to galvanise interpretive qualitative researchers in education to reflexively consider and justify the ways and extent to which their research decisions, processes and practices are rigorous.

The year 2024 marks the 50th anniversary year of the founding of the British Educational Research Association (BERA). In reaching this special milestone, and in the context of BERA's 50th annual conference playing host to the World Educational Research Association (WERA) focal meeting with close to 2000 educational research colleagues from over 70 nations in attendance from across the globe, Marlon Lee Moncrieffe's inaugural presidential address celebrates BERA in its dynamic identity and outlook as a scholarly community of cultural leadership for championing the power of educational research. By seeing BERA's past in the present through the foundational principle of looking outwards to the future across the diverse educational research community, the challenges and opportunities of this perspective lead to critical discussion of educational research for teaching and learning about national community, identity and culture, the social complexities and political tensions in this, and specifically the making and possible remaking of national curriculum policy for schools in England in aiming to address issues of diversities in society. This address concludes by discussing the power of opportunity for the BERA community in consolidation of its expertise for taking leadership action in bringing forth quality research evidence to support the redefinition of national curriculum educational policy for national community and public benefit, thus demonstrating our renown as embodying the best that is being thought and said in society through educational research.

This paper is about how a rights perspective, both children's and others' rights, can be used to make sense of schooling which is more inclusive of children and young people with special educational needs/disabilities (SEN/D). It is based on a project that used deliberative democratic approaches, in the form of a Citizens' Panel, to address the question of how to make schools more inclusive for children with SEN/D. This paper aims to examine how the panellists' ideas about more inclusive schools are linked to rights-respecting school principles and to a balance of rights perspective. The project involved 28 panellists: young people (aged 12–16 years) with and without SEN/D, their parents and education professionals in an English local area. Thematic analyses showed links between the panel's ideas about more inclusive schools and rights-respecting school principles, with no panellists mentioning the term ‘rights-respecting’ schools. Analysis also showed that the panel's ideas about more inclusive schools recognised the distinctive and joint interests of learners with and without SEN/D and teachers. Through the best interests of the child principle, this was connected to the balance of rights perspective. This analysis has shown how a Citizens' Panel based on deliberative democratic methods has expressed such rights ideas relevant to more inclusive schools. The paper also discusses how these results might be due to the characteristics of the deliberative democratic process.

Careers guidance has long been positioned as a tool to improve young people's transition from education to employment. In addition, schools and colleges in England have a statutory requirement to provide careers guidance to their students. Yet limited research has investigated how careers guidance is provided in special schools for autistic pupils. We investigated this topic by eliciting the views and experiences of special school staff responsible for careers guidance in their setting. We used a participatory, mixed-method approach, which included an online survey and semi-structured interviews. Staff responsible for careers guidance from 103 special schools from across England completed the online survey, in which they self-reported on the careers guidance activities taking place within their schools. Twenty of these participants then took part in detailed semi-structured interviews about their experience of providing careers guidance to their autistic young people. Our online survey results showed that special schools are using a broad range of careers guidance activities with their autistic students, including embedding learning about careers within the curriculum, work experience and 1:1 careers advice. The results also highlight that special school staff value the Gatsby Benchmarks as a framework for providing careers guidance. Our interview results built on those of the survey to demonstrate that while special school staff take a hugely personalised approach to providing careers guidance to their autistic young people, they also report barriers in relation to some key aspects. Most notably, they highlighted how external factors often limited how accessible work experience was for their autistic young people. We discuss the implications of these findings for both policy and practice, including providing suggestions for how improvements could be made in the future.

Despite the continued global prevalence of discourses of educational inclusion, young people across local, national and international contexts continue to be educated outside of mainstream schools. In England, a diverse market of providers—known as alternative provision (AP)—cater for many of these young people. Unlike the mainstream school sector, where diversity of provision has been positioned as a key facilitator of parental choice and improved standards, there is limited evidence on how diversity and choice operate in the AP sector. This paper contributes to addressing this gap by analysing the range of organisations operating under the auspices of AP and their associated governance and regulatory mechanisms. Document analysis of the approved list of AP in a case study local authority demonstrates a diverse set of organisation types and associated governance arrangements, with a common focus on compliance and a lack of accessible publicly available information. We argue that as a result, the most disadvantaged children and families may be underserved in relation to diversity and choice policy imperatives. We conclude by highlighting potential consequences of poorly understood governance in AP for the achievement of equity goals—consequences which are of relevance across international educational contexts.

Teacher shortages are not only severe and long term, but are strongly patterned by social inequities. In many Western countries the teaching workforce is dominated by White women, yet there is a lack of consideration as to why these patterns persist. This paper presents the first longitudinal exploration of young people's trajectories into teaching. It uses data from 31 interviews to examine the educational experiences and career aspirations of three young White women over 11 years: from primary school, through secondary school, further and higher education, and into initial teacher education. Analysing these data with an intersectional identity lens reveals how, despite each participant encountering significant obstacles on their pathway into teaching, once they were in teacher education all three participants narrated teaching as their ‘vocation’. An exploration of why these White women implied that they were ‘meant’ to teach is presented, along with consideration of how the discourse that teaching is a vocation may discourage those who do not feel that it applies to them. The paper ends with evidence-informed recommendations for those working to improve teacher recruitment in research and policy.

Environmental issues caused by human activities are posing a threat to the health and well-being of all humanity. Environmental education is a key component of global efforts to address and mitigate environmental change. Adolescents, who will be the future citizens combating climate change, are the primary group receiving this education. Building on the theory of planned behaviour, this research extends the norm activation model and social cognitive theory to examine the factors influencing adolescents’ engagement in environmental protection activities. The model integrates rational factors, moral responsibility and external environmental influences, offering a thorough exploration of the factors that shape behavioural intentions. Structural equation modelling is used to identify the key factors that significantly influence adolescents’ intention to participate in environmental protection. The results indicate that personal norms, resource support, social norms, perceived behavioural control and attitudes towards environmental protection all significantly influence adolescents’ behavioural intention. Social support does not significantly affect behavioural intention. Personal norms have a greater influence on behavioural intention than subjective norms. This study presents a comprehensive adolescent environmental intention model for understanding the factors influencing adolescents’ intention to engage in environmental protection and offers a reference for future research on environmental education programmes and the development of intervention strategies.