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This study, conducted within the interpretive paradigm, aimed to understand how democratic education is constructed around the theme of 'responsible and active citizen' in the national core curriculum in Northern Cyprus. An in-depth document analysis was conducted, to examine the extent to which the learning outcomes across the curriculum are aligned with the competence descriptors in the Council of Europe's Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). This framework was used as a guide and a tool to obtain a European and global perspective. The findings revealed that there is alignment, to a certain degree, between the learning outcomes and the RFCDC competences. This confirms that some of the major concepts of democratic education are incorporated in the core curriculum. The findings also indicated that in this curriculum, democratic education focuses on knowledge and engagement at a basic level. In doing so, it undermines the experiential side of citizenship learning, and active participation in democratic life. The study also sheds light on the use and nature of the RFCDC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vignettes approach has emerged as a popular tool in quantitative and qualitative research. It has proven to be particularly effective in measuring sensitive topics. This paper focuses on the construction and validation process of questionnaire-based vignettes, which were used as an instrument to examine Omani secondary school girls’ cultural tolerance pre- and post-implementation of a school-based intervention. A total of 241 girls completed the vignettes-based questionnaires, of whom 116 were in the experimental group and 125 in the control group. This was followed by a semi-structured interview. The interview was conducted before and after the intervention with 16 participants, of whom eight were from the experimental group and eight from the control group. The study shows that vignettes are useful in generating a sophisticated understanding of abstract concepts. Vignettes offer the possibility of investigating tolerance in a context-related situation, eliminating possible misinterpretation of the questionnaire statements. Future research should be directed towards examining the effectiveness of different types of vignettes and the efficacy of vignettes as a research and teaching and learning tool. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study provides in depth understanding of the occurrence of team learning activities and social–emotional reactions within team meetings and their relationships by observing team meetings. In addition, the teams' assessment regarding both their teamwork and emotions they experienced during their teamwork were investigated by conducting team discussions with two of the observed teams. The findings revealed that all of the team members of all teams engaged in different kinds of team learning activities such as sharing experiences and reflecting about work tasks. The researchers also observed various social-emotional reactions such as solidarity, cheerfulness and tension. They identified patterns of positive social-emotional reactions and team learning activities in the data. The findings of the analysis of the team discussions provided additional information about the interpretation of the teamwork as well as the emotions team members experienced during their teamwork. The present study highlights that the use of observations in combination with team discussions is appropriate to gain in depth understanding of team learning in relation to emotions during teamwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home schooling has become increasingly widespread in recent decades. Much research has been conducted regarding different aspects of the practice, including parents' reasons for choosing home schooling. These are often quantitative studies that directly examine these reasons and frequently cite rational reasons. In contrast, the present research is a qualitative study that examined stories in order to understand the initial reasons underlying the decision of parents to educate their children at home. An analysis of interviews with 25 mothers who home school their children yielded numerous reasons for home schooling, including some that have not been cited in the research literature. Unlike previous studies, the present examination indicated two categories: rational, deliberate change and arbitrary change. The use of open research tools that indirectly inquire about the reasons for choosing home schooling enabled the identification of a second category, arbitrary change. The implications of these results for researchers of home schooling, home-schooling families and policy-makers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this qualitative longitudinal study is to create a more in-depth picture of the emergence of team learning behaviours throughout the lifespan of temporary project teams. In order to grasp the emergence of these behaviours, three project teams were followed from the start until the end of their project during a period of three months. Three team meetings spread over time were audiotaped and coded using a coding schema set-up to identify individual verbal behaviours and transform them into team learning behaviours. During the analysis, attention was given to the differentiation in the occurrence of different types of basic and facilitating team learning behaviours and in the occurrence of topics of learning behaviour (task – process – social) over time. Overall, no time-related patterns in terms of occurrence of type and topic of basic and facilitating team learning behaviours were found over the three meetings and across the three teams. The main driver for the occurrence of different team learning behaviours could be attributed to be the scope of the meeting during which they occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a qualitative study into the occurrence of the side effects of school inspection through in-depth interviews in five case schools. The study investigates the extent to which strategic activities, disturbing effects and emotional side effects occur in the case schools. The study also aims to understand features that may explain these side effects. Most research to date has been conducted in England, which is considered a ‘high-stakes’ inspection context whilst ‘low-stakes’ inspection contexts are generally regarded as causing fewer undesirable side effects. This hypothesis, however, is not confirmed by the results of this study. Although the Flemish education context provides a ‘low-stakes’ inspection context, schools in this study engage strongly in strategic activities to produce a better image of the school and school staff members suffer from severe emotional side effects due to the inspection. By contrast, only limited disturbing effects on normal school life were observed. These side effects are affected by principals’ attitude towards the inspection, by schools’ perception of inspectors’ behaviour and by the inspection judgement. The article includes a discussion of the impact on side effects of several particularities of the Flemish education context, such as the absence of central examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]