Recent research on the differential attainment of boys and girls at school has produced ndings in signi cant contrast to the standard account on which most previous explanations of the differences between boys and girls were based. Put simply, much previous research may have been attempting to explain differences whose nature was incompletely understood. The result, if these new ndings are accepted, is that further research is now necessary to discover the potential socio-economic, classroom and individual determinants of these gender gaps. In addition, it is important before such research takes place that the nature of the actual differences between the 'performance' of boys and girls is more clearly understood. This article is intended to be a part of that advance. It details differential attainment by gender for all students in Wales over 6 years and at every level of assessment from Key Stage 1 to A level. There are few signi cant gender differences in mathematics and the sciences (i.e. the majority of the core subjects). For all other subjects, there are no signi cant gender differences at the lowest level of any assessment. Otherwise, the gap in attainment between boys and girls rises with every grade or level in an assessment, leading to the conclusion that the problem, if indeed it is a problem, is one mainly facing mid-to high-attainers. Proportionately more girls are attaining high grades and more boys are attaining middle grades than might be expected. Trends over time reveal no great change in this picture at the subject level over 6 years, but in terms of aggregate scores such as government benchmarks, the gap between boys and girls is decreasing.
The paper applies Hoyle's notion of ‘extended’ professionality to modern higher education working. It begins with some of the policy contexts and theoretical perspectives around the structural and professional change experienced by academic staff: changes that have been documented in systematic studies of university life from the 1970s onwards. However, the realisation for academic staff that, at 45 per cent of the workforce, they were no longer the majority group in the sector, has added impetus to debates about work, the workplace and the role of change in scholarly life (Gornall, 2009). The Working Lives team has been gathering qualitative data on academic experiences of everyday work between 2007 and 2010, using life history and ethnographic methods. This paper draws on in‐depth interviews with 24 academics and participants in four focus groups, to consider the propensity in an ‘always‐on’ environment for staff to rarely ‘switch off’. This is explored alongside a set of ‘emic’ notions of working practices and places that characterise the ‘hyperprofessional’ academic.
The Best Practice Research Scholarship programme (BPRS) was one of a series of initiatives designed by the English Department for Educational Studies (DfES) between 2000 and 2003, to support teachers' continuing professional development. Each year, around 1,000 Scholarships of up to £3,000 each, were awarded to serving classroom teachers to engage in supported, school-focused research. This paper reports an evaluation of the national scheme during its last year. Documentation from a stratified random sample of 100 proposals and reports were examined and case studies undertaken in a sub-sample of 20 schools. The paper describes the major features of the scheme including topics studied, research methods employed, and the occupational position of teachers involved. In order to establish a basis for an evaluation of the scheme, the paper explores the nature of the projects and the extent to which they could be characterised as research. It is argued that for most teachers, the primary purpose of the projects was not to contribute to the public stock of knowledge but to improve practice within their own schools. The criteria for evaluating projects, it is argued, should therefore include their impact on teachers' own professional development, on their teaching practice, on pupils, on parents, and on their colleagues. Evidence is presented to suggest that projects did indeed appear to have considerable impact on all of these factors though only in a minority of cases was the evidence considered to be robust. The paper goes on to raise questions about the problematic nature of quality in teachers' research and the associated difficulties with 'dissemination'. The paper concludes by exploring the different factors that might affect the success of teachers' research including mentoring, finance and their occupational position within their school.
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