Publications

This briefing is the first in a series providing a quick guide to early childhood education and care (ECEC). It introduces the concept of ECEC, sets out evidence for different approaches to ECEC and relates this to current policy in Wales. It has been produced for the Assembly’s Research Service as part of the Academic…

Despite the commonalities in their work and in the opportunities and challenges that they face, prior to this workshop, there has been little interaction between organisations working with children and young people in language promotion across the four cases: Wales, Scotland, the North of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. As a result, the aims…

The survey results and analysis of the experiences and worries of children and young people in Wales and their priorities for the Children’s Commissioner.

Students’ sense of belonging is known to be strongly associated with academic achievement and a successful life at university. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of belonging, this study collected data via the 10 Words Question. Responses from 426 participants were analysed using a sequence of analytic methods including In Vivo coding, systematic coding, clustering, and…

It is hard to come to terms with the scale of loss caused by Geoff Whitty’s untimely death – a loss that will be felt on many levels – from the academic to the professional to the personal. There is not the space in this brief appreciation to pay tribute to the many ways in…

This report presents the results of an evidence review on the human rights of children in Wales and covers the period 2015 to the present day. The legal structures and processes in place to realise children’s rights in Wales are well known: for example, the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, which…

Building on existing critiques of contemporary arrangements in higher education, this paper focuses on the claim that the human capital model undermines the civic or public role of universities, restricts student engagement with learning and damages the capacity for critical thinking and empathy. Interviews with students studying either Business or Sociology at universities in Britain…

Within the framework of the EDUPLACES Project1, the arrival in June 2018 of the eminent teacher and researcher in education Sally Power from Cardiff University was an important opportunity, not only to benefit collectively from her presence as project consultant, but also, in a closer interaction, clarify some of her perspectives on the critical analysis…

This article explores issues of headteacher recruitment, retention and professional development in Wales, within the context of the wider educational policy reforms which, since 2011, have introduced greater external accountability into schools. The paper argues that these reforms have resulted in changes to headteachers’ professional roles and identities and that some aspects have militated against…

Debates on how best to educate young children have been raging over the last 100 years—more often fuelled by ideological preferences rather than empirical evidence. To some extent this is hardly surprising given the difficulty of examining pupil progress in a systematic and comparative way. However, the introduction of a new child‐centred curriculum in Wales…