Publications

There has been growing concern about the rising numbers of students being excluded from school in England – a trend that is often set against the declining levels of exclusion elsewhere. In Wales and Scotland, for example, numbers of students permanently excluded from school have fallen dramatically. However, we argue that simple system-level comparisons might…

This article considers three different concepts of the role of the teacher. Buber understands the teacher as the builder-teacher of a dialogical community playing a fundamental role in the character formation of individuals. Freire develops this notion, adding a political tinge, and argues for a political-teacher who plays a central role in the formation of critical individuals and in…

This paper considers the role that schools have in determining whether school leavers participate in higher education or not. It examines the association between schools and university participation using a unique dataset of 3 cohorts of all young people leaving maintained schools in Wales. School “effects” are identified, even after controlling for individual-level factors, such…

Background and Objectives Careers guidance for young people is regarded as important for supporting positive labour market outcomes. In particular, by helping young people to develop their career management competencies and their roles as learners and workers, careers guidance can help reduce the number of young people who fall outside of the education, training or employment system and from becoming ‘NEETS’….

  Reviewed Work Handbook of Education in China, edited by W. John Morgan, Qing Gu and Fengliang Li, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Edgar, 2017, 558 pp., £85 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-78347-065-5 Introduction This edited volume is a highly comprehensive handbook that contains everything a beginning scholar in Chinese education might need to know. Over 23 chapters it…

In December 2017 Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education in Wales commissioned WISERD to undertake an independent review of the implications for Estyn following the significant changes taking place in Wales through the development of a new curriculum together with a wide range of education reforms. The report written as a result of this review…

Gwerddon, 26(2) The Foundation Phase (FP) is a statutory curriculum in each state school in Wales since 2008. The curriculum follows a developmentally appropriate pedagogy, and encourages children to engage by learning through experiences. The paper that follows is taken from a wider evaluation of the FP, commissioned by Welsh Government in 2012 and considers…

The article draws upon Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital to provide an in-depth analysis of the gender differences in students’ motivation for undertaking postgraduate (PG) education in Mainland China. It reports an in-depth case study comprising 381 questionnaires and 30 semi-structured interviews. The quantitative data show that students who enter PG education do…

This paper focuses on the ‘mainstreaming’ of charities into schools. There have been growing concerns about the permeation of business and business values in education, but relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which schools are increasingly engaged in the ‘business’ of fundraising for charities. Drawing on survey data from the WISERDEducation…

WISERD Education was launched in 2012 in order to change the landscape of educational research in Wales. The main aims of the Programme were: to enhance the capacity to carry out high quality educational research within the higher education sector in Wales; •    to undertake research activities designed to improve the quality of learning and…