British Educational Research Journal最新文献

With levels of mental health difficulties among young people rising and policymakers focusing on the state's role in promoting young people's wellbeing, educational institutions have become positioned on the front line as key sites to identify and implement wellbeing interventions. This paper draws on a series of policy analyses and qualitative studies with young people and educators, leading to recognition for the importance of a relational approach to wellbeing. We outline the case for an identity-based approach to school wellbeing support, arguing that this reflects a novel point of departure from the largely individualistic approach reflected in the prevailing policy positions of many countries in the Global North, including the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. The paper advances an original relational approach, which we call Connected Belonging, that links identity-building and affirmation to wellbeing through strengthening students' sense of belonging across the different arenas of their daily lives: school, social life, local community and wider society. Connected Belonging's focus on building connection across these social domains provides young people with identity resources such as trust and validation, ultimately generating a meaningful sense of belonging. We argue that policymakers need to find ways to adapt current strategies and schooling regimes to ensure that school leaders have space and opportunity to engage with wellbeing policy and practice. Given the clear links between students' wellbeing, their engagement with school life and educational achievement, we highlight, as a priority, policy directions that counter the impetus towards competition and academic results and instead foster collaboration and broader notions of success.

In this paper, we theorise our practice as teacher educators to understand a practice issue: the challenge our students had in developing pedagogical reasoning. The article discusses the findings of the theorising process to explore how pedagogical reasoning is developed and why it is challenging. It also provides an approach for theorising and exemplifies the process. We first explain our practice issue before outlining a framework for theorising adapted from the work of Stepney and Thomson, and Coghlan and Rigg. The approach involved abductive reasoning through reflexive conversations and written accounts of practice in relation to the findings of an integrative literature review, our personal practical theories and our earlier research into the practice issue. Theorising led us to understand pedagogical reasoning as a complex process emerging from the integration of different forms of knowledge across Initial Teacher Education programmes. This integration depends on the formation of epistemic relations and requires an explicit intellectual endeavour between students and teacher educators. We explore how we might encourage this endeavour through the ideas of intellectual space, epistemic coherence and slow pedagogy. We also make the case for theorising to be considered as a form of practice-focused research and hope to encourage others to engage with its transformative potential for understanding persistent practice issues.

This study recognised that there is currently limited understanding of the extent and nature of ability grouping practices in subject areas other than mathematics and English in primary schools. Using survey methods, this research sought to generate data of sufficient scale to extend understanding of the use of ability grouping practices in primary physical education (PE) in England. Administration of a web-based survey to all (n = 917) state-funded mainstream and special schools catering for students in Key Stage 1 (aged 5–7) and/or Key Stage 2 (aged 7–11) in the North East of England produced a response rate of 27.7% (n = 254). Analysis of responses revealed that invariably class groups for PE lessons are deemed mixed ability, with a very small number of schools using streaming, setting or blending elements of approaches (e.g., mixed-ability grouping with a separate top and/or bottom set) to create class groups for PE. However, analysis of responses regarding within-class grouping practices revealed that ability is a prime point of reference for arranging students into smaller groups for teaching and learning activities in PE. The study findings point to the need for an expansion in research and professional learning relating to abilities and grouping practices in primary PE.

While collaborative learning activities are designed to foster inter-thinking and co-creation of knowledge, studies have suggested that these outcomes are not guaranteed simply because learners work together in groups. This study investigated the relationship between cognitive interaction during collaborative engagement and exploratory talk by analysing classroom dialogue and dialogic practices among 12 international Master of Arts in Education (MA Education) students participating in a collaborative problem-solving process. Data were collected from three different groups, totalling 10.5 h of collaborative problem-solving engagement. Two independent coders analysed these data using the Cambridge Dialogic Analysis Scheme toolkit. The analysis revealed variations in exploratory talk across the three groups. Exploratory talk was most likely to occur when ‘invitation’ codes were present. Notably, not all groups engaged in exploratory talk led to meaningful collaborative engagement, despite all groups successfully completing the assigned task by the end of collaborative problem-solving. This highlights a critical observation: task completion does not necessarily equate to deep, collaborative knowledge creation.

The structural approach of cultural capital theories neglects the idea that the impact of structural constraints on educational results can be reduced by agency. This predicament can be solved when the advantages of abundant educational resources available in schools are unpacked, since doing so can compensate for the paucity of such resources often seen in the low-socioeconomic status (SES) family social space. Although the gains available from such resources remain embedded in the school social space, it can be assumed that their compensatory function can be activated through reading activities that contribute significantly to students' cognitive development. This situation prompts two research questions related to the contributions of reading to academic disciplines such as mathematics and science, and the amelioration of the structural impact of SES and cultural capital on low-SES students' learning outcomes. To explore these questions, we used regression analysis and hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) to analyse data from the stratified random sample of Taiwanese students (n = 7342) contained in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 dataset. The estimates of regression analysis showed that reading ability functioned as a reliable indicator of Taiwanese students' mathematics and science scores on PISA 2018. The results of HLM analysis further demonstrated that the predominant influence of economic, social and cultural status and cultural capital can be attenuated significantly when the independent variables of school support and student personal efforts/learning strategies are considered. Accordingly, reading resources can be regarded as a compensatory genre of cultural capital embedded within the school social space, at least in the case of Taiwan, as the benefits they create need to be achieved through reading plans/projects scientifically implemented by schools.

Many newcomer children spend a ‘silent year’ in elementary school classrooms while they adjust to a new culture and language. This often delays inclusion in learning and forming friendships with peers. For refugee children with disabilities (RCDs) this phase may last for 3 years or more, impacting their mental health and sense of belonging, and potentially worsening issues they carry from experiences of war and violence. This paper suggests that these barriers might be overcome through capitalising on strategies that circumvent spoken language by relying on the universal language of art. While making art, children naturally explore their identities, decide how they will present themselves to others, find meaning in a healing narrative and safely process bad memories. The main goal of the study was to uncover hidden ‘knowledge of self and others’ through an arts-based research approach. Five arts education and art therapy methods with 49 children (aged 7–9) were implemented and evaluated, including self-portraits, emoji games, read-aloud story books, paper-bag puppets and digital stories. Findings reveal that over time, students undergo noticeable changes in their cognitive and affective understandings with exposure to art, and improve their language ability, self-esteem and well-being. An unexpected outcome was how the arts may scaffold RCDs into academic learning earlier than expected. Examples of student art are included in Appendix A.

The Foundation Phase is a pioneering early years education reform that was introduced across Wales in 2008. Based on a progressive, child-centred design, this reform aimed to improve educational outcomes in Wales and reduce achievement gaps for young learners. This paper reports a number of findings from a mixed-methods study that assessed the impact of the Foundation Phase on pupil outcomes. The study paid particular attention to learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and responded to a gap in the empirical literature on the impact of progressive early years reforms on pupil outcomes. The findings reveal a disconnect between teachers' positive perceptions of the programme for learners disadvantaged by poverty and its more modest impact on measured attainment. This disconnect is explored in the paper, with the aim of helping to better understand the impact of progressive reforms like the Foundation Phase for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing valuable insights for similar programmes and the new curriculum being rolled out in Wales.

School children experience a range of normative transitions throughout their compulsory education, with the transition from primary to secondary school seen as the most intensive and challenging. While this transition is well researched, the focus of such work has been labelled disparate and lacking in terms of its focus on the pupils’ experiences specifically. Consequently, to alleviate these concerns, this article draws on qualitative data gathered in a series of individual interviews with first year secondary school children currently experiencing the transition. The findings captured showcase a range of difficulties, brought about by the transition, and while the students were able to identify strategies designed to ease these issues, they found most solace in peer-led emotion work-based support. The implications of these findings, in terms of the positioning of children as focal points of support for transition-based concerns, and their ability to engage in meaningful emotion work grounded in the ethics of care are discussed and suggestions for future practice are made.

This study provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research on novice teachers, drawing from the metadata of 1032 publications indexed in the Scopus database. It explores publication trends, key contributors and prevailing research themes from 1945 to 2024, offering insights to inform and enhance support systems for novice teachers. Data were analysed using tools such as Microsoft Excel, biblioMagika, OpenRefine, VOSviewer and Biblioshiny to evaluate publication metrics, collaboration patterns and thematic trends. The analysis reveals a steady publication growth over time, with the USA emerging as the most productive country, supported by key institutions such as the University of California and Harvard University. Teaching and Teacher Education is identified as the most influential journal in this field. Most of the novice teacher publications were written in English (94.86%) and focused on the fields of social sciences. Dominant themes include teacher development, professional practices, mentoring and identity formation. While relying on Scopus data, this study highlights the need to incorporate additional databases in future research to understand the evolving landscape comprehensively. By addressing literature gaps and emphasising emerging topics, this study contributes valuable insights to novice teacher research, offering implications for policy and practice in teacher education.

This study examines the relationship between English-medium instruction (EMI), self-efficacy development and English performance among Vietnamese undergraduate students. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, the research investigated changes in self-efficacy through EMI instruction and explored self-efficacy as a predictor of English performance. Data were collected from 311 undergraduate students across three Vietnamese universities through self-efficacy questionnaires, Test of English for International Communication tests and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed differential patterns of self-efficacy development across language domains, with receptive skills showing more substantial improvements than productive skills. Listening self-efficacy demonstrated the strongest enhancement (d = 0.82), followed by reading (d = 0.76), speaking (d = 0.59) and writing (d = 0.54). Multiple regression analyses established self-efficacy as a significant predictor of English performance, explaining 43.2% of performance variance. The relationship between self-efficacy and performance was moderated by disciplinary context and institutional support, with stronger correlations observed among students with regular access to academic support services. These findings contribute to theoretical understanding of self-efficacy development in EMI contexts and provide practical implications for implementing effective language support systems in Vietnamese higher education institutions. The study suggests the need for discipline-specific approaches to EMI implementation and targeted interventions to enhance student confidence in academic language tasks.