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Curriculum materials (schemes of work, lesson plans, etc.) play a complex and pivotal role in school and teacher practices. The adaptation and development of curriculum materials often constitute part of teacher professional development (PD) activities. However, compared with research examining the relationship between PD and teacher professional change, the role of curriculum materials in professional learning remains under-researched and under-theorised. We address this gap by applying a multi-perspectival approach to data from a PD programme in which teachers were supported to develop curriculum materials. We use an interconnected model to analyse the role of curriculum materials in catalysing change in individual teachers’ practice. Our use of Boundary Theory proposes that curriculum material adoption is mediated by the solidity of boundaries between school practice and research findings, and Actor-Network Theory perspectives examine the assemblage of networked relations within and beyond schools that are entangled in curriculum materials. We highlight how combining linear and non-linear perspectives may contribute to improved understanding of the complexity of supporting teachers’ learning and use our analyses to outline implications of using curriculum materials in teacher professional development.

Designs combining different types of data are increasingly used in educational evaluation, to provide both evidence of impact and an explanation of the processes by which impacts are created. Logic models are visual representations of how an intervention leads via a set of steps from resources and inputs to outputs and then sets of outcomes. Their use has become widespread to underpin evaluations; and they have become of more interest in education as they have been promoted by policy makers and funders including the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England. This paper addresses the question: how can logic models be used to frame and implement educational evaluations using combinations of methods? To do so, the paper draws on theory-based evaluation literature to identify a set of issues to be considered: the role of implementation logic; causal mechanisms; the context of interventions; and the importance of considering and addressing issues around complexity. Using detailed examples from two study designs for EEF evaluations, the paper presents an evidence-informed logic model approach to deal with these issues. The paper concludes by reflecting on the practical and theoretical implications of this approach, laying out a set of key issues to address in future evaluations for which a design framed by an evidence-informed logic model may be appropriate.

Globally, there are ongoing problems with teacher retention, leading to a loss of experience and expertise. In policy and research, the emphasis is often on the professional development and retention of early career teachers, whereas teachers in later stages of their career are relatively under-represented. This article addresses this imbalance, reporting on a mixed methods scoping study that explores definitions of mid-career teachers in England and their retention and development, via a literature review, primary data collection and secondary analysis of data from the OECD’s TALIS 2018 survey. We found that there is no agreed definition of mid-career teacher, relating to time in teaching, role and wider life circumstances and self-definition. Whatever definition is used, mid-career teachers are a heterogenous group, with varying needs, career plans and commitment to the profession. Whilst typically confident in their practice, their learning needs vary and are often experienced as unmet, especially for those looking for progression routes outside leadership and those with family commitments. This indicates that their potential for career development to benefit the profession may not be reached. The article concludes with suggestions for further study, policy and practice to improve understanding of this under-researched group.

One approach to designing, researching or evaluating professional learning experiences is to use models of learning processes. Here we analyse and critique five significant contemporary analytical models: three variations on path models, proposed by Guskey, Desimone and Clarke and Hollingsworth; a model using a systemic conceptualisation of learning by Opfer and Pedder; and a cognitive learning model by Evans. To do this, we develop and illustrate an analytical framework focused on model components, purposes, scope, explicit and implicit theories of learning and change processes, agency and philosophical underpinnings. We identify similarities, differences, inconsistencies and limitations in the models. This provides the basis for reconceptualising models as tools to be deployed alongside other relevant constructs and thus the analytical framework can support a more informed selection of theoretical models by researchers and practitioners.

This paper develops a path model of professional development (PD) to explore the relationship between teacher PD and teacher careers and retention. A focussed literature review frames the study, which is based on a survey of 500 + teachers and interviews with 25 teachers. The findings provide evidence of the influence of PD on intermediate outcomes within the model and some evidence of influence on career progression. The paper concludes that a path model can provide a useful frame for examining the influence of PD on career, but the approach is limited given the complex, situated nature of teachers' careers.

Policymakers and school leaders seek to improve the quality of teaching through curriculum innovations and professional development programmes, increasingly drawing on evidence‐based approaches. For innovations involving teacher professional learning, a causal connection is posited between professional development activities, teacher engagement in them, changed practices and outcomes for learners. However, implementation and teachers’ engagement in professional development activity varies. Reasons for this include the influence of both the local and wider systemic environment in which the activity takes place and actors’ relationships to these environments. Currently, both environments and actors’ relationships are often shaped by performativity discourses and pressures. Typical implementation and process evaluation methodologies are limited by a focus on the easily measurable, often using tools that do not support fine‐grained understanding of how actors’ situations, purposes and systemic influences, and the interrelationships between these, mediate and shape different degrees of participation. Developing more in‐depth accounts are hindered by a relative lack of theorisation of context in relation to professional development. The paper uses a set of theoretical constructs to provide a stronger account of the variation and engagement in participation in such activity, with particular attention paid to the way school and teachers’ positioning within performativity systems influences participation. Constructs employed are teachers and schools’ positioning in terms of relative degrees of systemic privilege or disadvantage—understood as economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital—figured worlds and system coupling.

Increasingly, policymakers seek to improve the quality of teaching through curriculum innovations and continuing professional development (CPD) programmes. However, engagement by schools and teachers varies due to mediating influences of neoliberal policies. In this article, we contribute to understanding how these tendencies affect participation. Problematising the notion of context, we examine ways in which systemic influences interacted with participation in a government-funded mathematics professional and curriculum development programme and also with participants’ purposes.\ud A 3-level clustered Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) and an implementation and process evaluation were augmented by in-depth case studies, cross-case analysis and the application of theoretical constructs to interpret findings. Theories of capital, figured worlds and systemic coupling are utilised to theorise context.\ud Different levels of engagement are partly explainable by: the interaction of schools' relative systemic advantage and disadvantage; their orientation and coupling to performativity regimes; and the alignment or dissonance between continuing professional development or change programmes and the pedagogical and CPD cultures and purposes of the ‘actors’ (schools, departments and teachers). Performativity concerns restricted what were considered legitimate outcomes in some case study schools. This depended on teachers and schools' positioning in terms of relative degrees of systemic privilege or disadvantage - understood as economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital - and also in terms of figured worlds and system coupling. The case studies provide insights into how collaborative professional learning can be fostered more productively. Methodologically, we demonstrate the power of combining methodologies and applying explanatory social theory to augment quasi-experimental paradigms.

Despite the very large literature on teacher careers from an individual perspective, there is relatively little that links the perspectives of teachers themselves to how schools as organisations approach careers. The aim of this paper is, first, to outline how teachers’ orientations towards careers change across three dimensions, and, second, to examine how schools as organisations deal with career, developing a model of organisational responses, including developing a concept of ‘career culture’, derived from an analysis of interviews regarding the first three years of teaching conducted with senior leaders and second-year teachers themselves. By considering the fit between individuals’ career orientations and school career cultures, the paper surfaces both the fluid nature of these orientations and the subsequent potential instability of the fit.

This article presents the results of a study of the impact of three programmes of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), namely Leading from the Middle, the National Professional Qualification for Headship and the Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers. All three programmes embody a blended learning approach that includes an in-school component. This article focuses on factors within the programmes that influence learning from the in-school components. It focuses particularly on factors relating to individual participants and to the school contexts within which they work. The article relates the findings to previous literature on work-based learning and suggests a broader model of the factors that influence the outcomes of leadership development programmes.

Array CGH for the detection of genomic copy number variants has replaced G-banded karyotype analysis. This paper describes the technology and its application in a clinical diagnostic service laboratory. DNA extracted from a patient’s sample (blood, saliva or other tissue types) is labeled with a fluorochrome (either cyanine 5 or cyanine 3). A reference DNA sample is labeled with the opposite fluorochrome. There follows a cleanup step to remove unincorporated nucleotides before the labeled DNAs are mixed and resuspended in a hybridization buffer and applied to an array comprising ~60,000 oligonucleotide probes from loci across the genome, with high probe density in clinically important areas. Following hybridization, the arrays are washed, then scanned and the resulting images are analyzed to measure the red and green fluorescence for each probe. Software is used to assess the quality of each probe measurement, calculate the ratio of red to green fluorescence and detect potential copy number variants.

This paper investigates the impact that electric vehicle uptake will have on the national electricity demand of Great Britain. Data from the National Travel Survey, and the Coventry and Birmingham Low Emissions Demonstration (CABLED) are used to model an electrical demand profile in a future scenario of significant electric vehicle market penetration. These two methods allow comparison of how conventional cars are currently used, and the resulting electrical demand with simple substitution of energy source, with data showing how electric vehicles are actually being used at present. The report finds that electric vehicles are unlikely to significantly impact electricity demand in GB. The paper also aims to determine whether electric vehicles have the potential to provide ancillary services to the grid operator, and if so, the capacity for such services that would be available. Demand side management, frequency response and Short term Operating Reserve (STOR) are the services considered. The report finds that electric cars are unlikely to provide enough moveable demand peak shedding to be worthwhile. However, it is found that controlling vehicle charging would provide sufficient power control to viably act as frequency response for dispatch by the transmission system operator. This paper concludes that electric vehicles have technical potential to aid management of the transmission network without adding a significant demand burden.

Continuing professional development (CPD) evaluation in education has been heavily influenced by ‘level models’, deriving from the work of Kirkpatrick and Guskey in particular, which attempt to trace the processes through which CPD interventions achieve outcomes. This paper considers the strengths and limitations of such models, and in particular the degree to which they are able to do justice to the complexity of CPD and its effects. After placing level models within the broader context of debates about CPD evaluation, the paper reports our experience of developing such models heuristically for our own evaluation practice. It then draws on positivist, realist and constructivist traditions to consider some more fundamental ontological and epistemological questions to which they give rise. The paper concludes that level models can be used in a number of ways and with differing emphases, and that choices made about their use will need to reflect both theoretical choices and practical considerations.