With Scale in Mind: A Continuous Improvement Model for Implementation

The conventional approach to scaling up educational reforms considers the development and testing phases to be distinct from the work of implementing at scale. Decades of research suggest that this approach yields inconsistent and often disappointing improvements for schools most in need. More recent scholarship on scaling school improvement suggests that these activities should be integrated into implementation, although this presents challenges in how we evaluate implementation in particular schools. This paper presents a framework to conceptualize implementation when design, implementation, and scaling up are integrated activities.     

Puncturing notions of precarity through critical educational research on young lives in Australia: towards a critical ethnography of youth

This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education – the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of ‘social waste’ and that allowing them to be unproblematically portrayed as constituting a precariat is an over-simplification if not a misrepresentation. In making the case for a different approach, conceived in terms of a critical ethnography of student disengagement, the paper invokes a political economy approach in which learning is seen as a political act engaged in by young people. The paper concludes with a series of propositions intended to provide a different and more critically ethnographic inflection on what is occurring.     

Technical replicas of Portuguese ceramic tile bodies produced in the Oporto region in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries

Portugal is well known for its facades decorated entirely with ornamented glazed ceramic wall tiles called azulejos. On ageing, the tiles may detach and fall off, or deteriorate to such an extent that it becomes necessary to replicate them. Hence tile replication is a common practice in Portugal for façade restoration, but very often these new tiles do not have the same physical and/or chemical properties as the original ones. Such differences might be a factor in differential deterioration of the façades after restoration. One step toward an improvement in compatibility is to make new ceramic bodies with the same characteristics as the original ones. This study focuses on two types of glazed ceramic wall tiles from the Oporto region in Portugal: ‘calcic faience’ and pó de pedra. A total of 25 samples from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries were studied systematically as an attempt to improve knowledge of these materials and to create a basis for their replication. All samples were collected from facades that were under conservation/restoration at the time when sampling was performed. The original traditional ceramic bodies were analyzed by X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence. Total open porosity, capillary absorption coefficient, and mercury intrusion porosimetry were also measured in order to gain knowledge on their physical characteristics in addition to their chemical and mineralogical compositions. High-temperature crystalline phases such as diopside, gehlenite, and mullite were found in the calcic faience, suggesting that the firing temperature of calcic faience bodies was within the range of 1100–1150?°C. Calcination trials were also performed in order to determine the most probable firing temperatures of the ceramic bodies. Collected data led to the assumption that the raw materials used for the ceramic bodies were kaolinitic clay, quartz sand, limestone, and talc. The raw materials for pó de pedra tiles were found to include kaolinite clay and quartz with firing temperatures estimated within the temperature range of 1150–1360?°C. Technical replicas made on the basis of these investigations were found to have the same mineralogical and capillary properties as the original tiles.     

Religion and primary school choice in Ireland: school institutional identities and student profile

Ireland’s demographic profile has changed significantly in the past 20 years, being now characterised by increasing cultural, ethnic and religious diversity. However, primary schooling in Ireland has remained highly denominational, mostly Roman Catholic, in nature, with a small number of minority faith schools and multi-denominational schools. This paper describes the nature of the Irish primary educational system and addresses the implications of its institutional structure and school institutional identity for school choice. In so doing, it draws on the national Growing Up in Ireland study, and documents the role of socio-cultural and religious factors in the choice of primary school.     

The link between executive functions and literacy: introduction

This special issue was born within the M2S Project (Mindfulness to students’ success: Relating executive functions and writing through a mindfulness app to promote children’s cognitive, social, and health-related outcomes) to call researchers and practitioners’ attention to the role that executive functions play on the acquisition and development of literacy skills, a neglected topic in the field. The selected papers include various methods and techniques to examine the relationships between literacy and executive functions across languages/cultures and different age groups, with and without disabilities.