Society for Educational Studies Annual Book Prize winner: 2nd PrizeThis ground-breaking volume draws upon a rich and variegated range of methodologies to understand more fully the practices, policies and resources available in and to religious education in British schools. The descriptions, explanations and analyses undertaken here draw on an innovative combination of policy work, ethnography, Delphi methods, Actor Network Theory, questionnaires, textual analysis as well as theolog...

This book provides a refreshing and user-friendly guide to quantitative data analysis in education for students and researchers. It assumes absolutely no prior knowledge of quantitative methods or statistics. Beginning with the very basics, it provides the reader with the knowledge and skills necessary to be able to undertake routine quantitative data analysis to a level expected of published research.Rather than focusing on teaching statistics through mathematical formulae, the bo...

Curriculum materials are among the most pervasive and powerful influences on school mathematics. In many mathematics classes, student assignments, the questions the teacher asks, the ways students are grouped, the forms of assessment, and much more originate in curriculum materials. At the same time, teachers have considerable latitude in how they use their curriculum materials. Two classes making use of the same materials may differ markedly in what mathematics content is emphasized and h...

Issues of language in mathematics learning and teaching are important for both practical and theoretical reasons. Addressing issues of language is crucial for improving mathematics learning and teaching for students who are bilingual, multilingual, or learning English. These issues are also relevant to theory: studies that make language visible provide a complex perspective of the role of language in reasoning and learning mathematics. What is the relevant knowledge base to consider when d...

Has any occupational group been the subject of as much research as elementary or primary school teachers? Written by a former elementary school teacher, this intensive study considers how the foundations of the ongoing teacher reform movement have appealed to researchers through its successive stages. By tracing these ideas back to their historical roots, Jonathan Neufeld illustrates how they actually descend from the physical and biological sciences rather than from student/teacher relati...

One of the most persistent features of the research environment in the UK over the last decades has been the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE); now more and more countries are following suit by developing their own systems for research quality assessment. However, in the field of education, one of the difficulties with this policy has been that a

There is now a widespread expectation that teachers and coaches should be reflective practitioners, an expectation written into national standards of education in many countries. This innovative book introduces the methods by which teachers and coaches can conduct research into their own professional practice and therefore become more effective reflective practitioners, improving their students’ learning as a result.As the only book on practitioner research that focuses specificall...

This book explores the complexities of investigating minorities, majorities, boundaries and borders, and the experiences of researchers who choose to work in these spaces. It engages with issues of ethics, disclosure and representation, and contends with and seeks to contribute to emerging debates around power and the positioning of researchers and participants. Chapters examine epistemologies that shape researchers’ beliefs about the forms of research that are valued in educational resear...

**Shortlisted for the nasen Special Educational Needs Academic Book award 2008**Inclusion has become very influential internationally in the field of schooling. This has involved the introduction of policies that pursue more provision for, and acceptance of, students with special educational needs or disabilities in ordinary school settings. However, these policies represent different and often conflicting values and approaches to education.The basic dilemm...

Although STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) has been diversely defined by various researchers (e.g. Buck Institute, 2003; Capraro & Slough, 2009; Scott, 2009; Wolf, 2008), during the last decade, STEM education has gained an increasing presence on the national agenda through initiatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES). The rate of technological innovation and change has been tremendous over the past ten years...

This book envisions the formulation of critical perspectives on education reform using the Philippine experience, recognizing the need to address relevant issues and challenges particularly in an increasingly globalized twenty-first century setting. A specific education reform project, the Leaders and Educators in Asia Programme (LEAP), a joint effort between the Philippines’ Department of Education, the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, the National Institute of Education-Si...

Punctuation Matters gives straight answers to the queries raised most frequently by practitioners in computing, engineering, medicine and science as they grapple with day-to-day tasks in writing and editing. The advice it offers is based on John Kirkman’s long experience of providing courses on writing and editing in academic centres, large companies, research organisations and government departments in the UK, Europe and in USA. Sample material discussed in the book comes from re...