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In recent years, student voice has become a popular school reform strategy, with the promise of generating relations of trust, respect, belonging and student empowerment. However, when student voice practices are taken up by schools, student voice may also be associated with less affirmative feelings: it is often accounted for in terms of teacher 'fear', 'resistance' or 'uncertainty' about altered power relations. Such explanations risk individualising and pathologising teachers' responses, rather than recognising the complexities of the institutional conditions of student voice. This article considers the affective politics of student voice: that is, the contestations that attend who gets to name how student voice feels in schools. Working with data from an evaluation study of three Australian primary schools who engage in 'exemplary' student voice practices, we listen to school leaders and facilitating teachers' accounts about the responses of other teachers at their schools to student voice. Parallels are drawn between the construction of some teachers as reluctant, and previous analyses of 'silenced' student voices in schools. We argue that, in order to analyse the enactment of student voice in more nuanced tones, it is necessary to consider the profoundly emotional experience of teaching and learning, the ambivalences of teachers' experiences of student voice and contemporary reconstitutions of teacher subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid a growing focus on graduate employability, this study examines the relationship between students' part-time work, career aspirations and self-efficacy, in a survey of 357 UK students from two post-92 universities. The results suggest a positive and significant relationship between part-time work and career aspiration. Students who work part-time, and value this opportunity, are likely to have a high career aspiration and strive to enhance their employability agenda. Self-efficacy (students' belief in their ability to succeed) is significantly associated with career aspiration. No significant gender differences were found in our sample for all study variables. Finally, students' level of study and malleable self-theories (the belief that people are changeable and with effort can achieve more) were found to be the strongest predictors of part-time work, while self-efficacy is the strongest predictor of career aspiration. These findings confirm the importance of individual self-efficacy in the value attached to part-time working among students in higher education (HE). Nonetheless, those students who do not work part-time while studying, do so mainly because they do not want to detract from their study. The concluding part of the paper discusses relevant application and policy implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maximising educational attainment is important for both individuals and societies. However, understanding of why some students achieve better than others is far from complete. Motivation and achievement data from a sample of 782 secondary-school students in New Zealand reveal that two specific types of outcome goals, namely maximal levels of aspiration and minimal boundary goals, predict subsequent student achievement independently of mastery, performance goals, self-efficacy, student demographics and context variables including school type and time spent in out-of-school activities. In addition, our results underline that the relationships between these two specific outcome goals and achievement are moderated by the type of assessment tasks used to index achievement. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that understanding variability in students' academic performance can be significantly enhanced by taking into consideration individual differences in the strength of their maximal levels of aspirations and minimal boundary goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been established since the 1960s that tracking yields negative consequences for students in lower tracks. As this research has been carried out mainly in the USA and UK, the effects of tracking have been demonstrated in systems of within-school tracking mostly. However, in many European countries-such as Belgium (Flanders)-tracking is commonly organised between schools. The question then arises whether the specific system of tracking, within-school vs between-school tracking, might affect the impact of tracking on students. Although in Flanders between-school tracking is the norm, there are a number of schools offering a combination of academic tracks with technical and/or vocational tracks, allowing for a comparison of both systems. The present study investigates whether the association between feelings of futility and the specific track a student is enrolled in depends upon whether these tracks are organised between or within schools. Three-level multilevel analyses ( HLM6) of 11,872 3rd- and 5th-grade students clustered in 146 tracks in a representative sample of 85 secondary schools in Flanders are carried out based on the Flemish Educational Assessment (Fl EA) data gathered in 2004-2005. Within-school tracking appears to have a slightly greater impact on the association between track position and sense of futility. So, lower-track students who are directly confronted with higher-track students in the same school seem more likely to lose their faith in a meritocratic system, as they put luck above working hard or above merit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hands-on simulations are increasingly used in vocational oriented curricula to create meaningful, occupation-related learning experiences. However, more insight is required about precisely what characteristics in hands-on simulations enhance outcomes that students need for their future occupation, such as competencies. This study aims to examine how constructivist pedagogical-didactic design principles affect competence development of senior vocational education and professionally oriented bachelor's degree students in a wide range of hands-on simulations. For this purpose, 23 hands-on simulations were studied. Teachers rated the degree of authenticity and self-directedness of the hands-on simulations. Student perceptions (N = 516) of value, authenticity and self-directedness (operationalized as choice), as well as their competence development, were gathered using questionnaires. The results of the hierarchical regression analyses showed that: (1) authenticity and self-directedness did not automatically lead to more competence development; and (2) student perceptions of perceived value, authenticity and choice of how to perform tasks were the main predictors of competence development in the simulations. Nonetheless, the additional mediation analyses suggest that it is still important for teachers to invest in learning activities that stimulate self-directedness as these activities indirectly predicted competence development, through student perceptions. Several reasons for the results are discussed, among them the mismatch between teachers and students of what was considered authentic, complexity of the simulations, the teacher's role as facilitator instead of activator and the lack of choice possibilities. Ideas for future research, as well as practical implications concerning designing and implementing hands-on simulations for fostering competence development, are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to clarify the epistemological basis of self-regulated learning. The authors note that learning to learn, a term that has pervaded education policy at EU and national levels in recent years is often conflated with self-regulated learning. As a result, there has been insufficient attention paid to learning as social performance and to a more nuanced conceptualisation of agency. A review of the literature on self-regulated learning suggests that self-regulated learning is behaviour that is oriented towards the optimal execution of predefined tasks. The authors suggest that the consequences of this are a resolute focus on the individual learner and a striking denial of learning as social performance. They trace the origins of self-regulated learning to ad-hoc combinations of behaviourism and cognitive psychology and explore the consequences of this for the way in which learning to learn is conceptualized. They argue that a reflexive social epistemology is a necessary counterweight to the systematic neglect of learning as a social process that has resulted from the psychological turn in learning theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the implications of grade retention (repeating a grade) and social promotion (automatic promotion to the next grade each year) for high school students' academic and non‐academic outcomes. Based on data from 3261 high school students, structural equation modeling demonstrated that, after controlling for interactions with other factors, demographic covariates and ability, there were significant (p < 0.001) main effects of grade retention. In terms of academic factors, grade retention was a significant negative predictor of academic self‐concept and homework completion and a significant positive predictor of maladaptive motivation and weeks absent from school. In terms of non‐academic factors, grade retention was a significant negative predictor of self‐esteem but was not significantly associated with relationship with peers. In follow‐up analyses using a sub‐sample of retained (n = 186) and promoted (n = 186) students matched by ability, age and gender, findings were confirmed and with stronger effects on some factors. For nations and systems emphasizing grade retention and for those emphasizing social promotion, findings have implications for educational practice, policy and theories of child and academic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings from research conducted at nine schools (seven primary, two secondary) in England, which had previously implemented a peer mediation service for students experiencing interpersonal conflict. This analysis was informed by themes from a previous stage of research conducted at one additional primary school, where the process from pre- to post-intervention had been observed in greater detail. The article utilises activity theory as a conceptual framework for understanding and describing these processes for a number of reasons that will be briefly explained. The findings of this research highlight the need for realistic anticipation of the degree of cultural transformation required to fully support such pupil empowerment initiatives in schools. Peer mediation was most successful in schools where there was a considerable shift in the division of labour, accompanied by the production of new cultural tools that promoted new ways of thinking, speaking and acting with regard to conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will review the existing student voice work in higher education and critique its current weaknesses, particularly in relation to conceptualisations of and commitments to participation, transformation and empowerment. It will be argued that the employment of participatory methods in higher education student voice work offers a way to address these weaknesses. The potential of participatory methods is illustrated and discussed using two case examples drawn from one higher education institution in the UK. The first case provides an illustration of what is called 'transformation of the familiar', while the second case provides an illustration of empowerment, through recognising the importance of what is not voiced by students, as much as what is voiced. It is concluded that whilst a participatory approach to student voice work in higher education has potential, further work is required in order to evaluate the long-term impact of projects that use such methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]