ABSTRACT Practical experiences during teacher education significantly impact student teachers’ well-being, yet little is known about the specific incidents that trigger changes. Drawing on data from student teachers in Germany, this study examined 567 critical incidents reported by 146 participants over six weeks of their 15-week practicum to understand how these moments shape well-being. The findings reveal that positive experiences were more frequent and had a strong influence on student teachers’ emotional and professional development. Moments of student praise, faculty inclusion, and classroom success fostered joy, pride, and a sense of accomplishment. Successfully managing classrooms, engaging students, and overcoming challenges further strengthened their confidence and professional identity. In contrast, negative experiences, though less common, had a detrimental impact on well-being. Student teachers reported frustration and self-doubt arising from isolation, lack of mentor support, dismissive parents, and classroom difficulties. These moments undermined their confidence and sense of preparedness for teaching. The findings highlight that, as student teachers adjust to the realities of teaching, the situations they typically encounter have significant power in shaping their well-being. These moments represent critical points of reflection, where student teachers assess their ability to meet the demands of the role, which impacts their job-related well-being.

ABSTRACT Teacher-student relationship quality has been found to be important for a range of educational outcomes. It appears to be associated with student socioeconomic background, but little is known about the processes driving socioeconomic inequalities in teacher-student relationships. In this paper we draw on cultural reproduction theory to suggest three mechanisms linking student socioeconomic background with teacher-student relationship quality: student behaviour; parental interest and involvement; and student unpreparedness for school. We use data from Cohort ‘08 of Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) on 5-year-old children to assess socioeconomic inequalities in teacher-student conflict and closeness, and the extent to which these can be explained by the three mechanisms. As expected, we find that children with parents from the working class and with no jobs have less close and more conflictual relationships with their teachers than students whose parents are from the managerial and professional classes. All three mechanisms appear to be contributing to these inequalities with student behaviour having the relatively smallest mediating effect and only parental interest (rather than involvement) being relevant. Our findings suggest ways of mitigating inequalities in teacher-student relationships and, hence, closing social gaps in early school outcomes.

ABSTRACT Many students in the United States experience educational disruptions when changing schools for reasons other than grade promotion. These nonstructural moves can detrimentally affect students’ mathematics learning. While gender significantly shapes individual learning experiences, how student mobility plays out in mathematics learning based on gender has remained largely unexplored. Analysing six California school districts’ panel data using school-fixed effect models, the findings in this study showed that the negative association of nonstructural mobility with mathematics performance is more detrimental for males than females and that self-management competency levels fully account for the differential effect. The findings suggest gender should be considered in understanding students’ mobility experiences and underscore the need for incorporating self-management into educational interventions to mitigate the negative effects of nonstructural school transitions on mathematics performance.

ABSTRACT Principal ambidextrous leadership that contains two contradicting leaderships is the key to school development and teacher work engagement. This conceptualisation is also well aligned with the cultural values embedded in the Chinese educational context. However, how principal ambidextrous leadership combining transformational and transactional leadership affects teacher work engagement remains unclear. We aimed to figure out when and how ambidextrous leadership promotes teacher work engagement through school climate. To explore these mechanisms, this study surveyed 1,498 teachers from six provinces in mainland China to examine the mediation model with a moderated direct effect incorporating transformational leadership, transactional leadership, school climate, and teacher work engagement. The key results show the following: (1) Ambidextrous leadership, operationalised as the interaction term of transformational and transactional leadership, significantly and positively predicts teacher work engagement; (2) School climate mediates the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and teacher work engagement; (3) The main effect of ambidextrous leadership on teacher work engagement is moderated by the balance of ambidexterity (i.e. the absolute difference between transformational and transactional leadership). Specifically, when the absolute difference between transformational and transactional leadership is low, the positive predictive effect of ambidextrous leadership on teacher work engagement is stronger. The research findings provide valuable insights for educational practice.

ABSTRACT Previous research on co-teaching between native-English-speaking (NES) teachers and non-native-English-speaking (NNES) teachers has been aiming at increasing students’ English proficiency, but knowledge of how this teaching approach can facilitate teacher professional development (TPD) remains limited. This study investigated teachers’ perceptions of co-teaching as professional development in a Chinese context. The participants were 10 pairs of co-teachers from 10 universities in China. They were invited to complete an open-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The results showed that co-teaching helped the teachers enhance language proficiency, enrich cultural knowledge, improve teaching methods and increase ability for classroom management. All these attributes in co-teaching were found to be effective in promoting the teachers’ professional growth. Meanwhile, the teachers also held that their collaborative teaching was hindered by three obstacles in classroom teaching: lack of mutual understanding, conflicts of teaching styles, lack of time and expertise in planning co-teaching. The findings of this study suggest that, to make the best use of co-teaching in English classroom, local schools should provide co-teachers with more opportunities to interact and learn from each other. As for co-teachers, they should endeavour to reconcile their different teaching styles and make a detailed plan for co-teaching.

ABSTRACT The relevance of school principals’ leadership behaviour in promoting school effectiveness and improvement is less discussed and known in emerging countries, explicitly in Sub-Saharan countries. Moreover, there is a significant inconclusive body of literature on the most dominant leadership model (instructional (IL) and transformational (TL) in determining the coherence of school improvement and student academic achievement. Hence, the current study extended the knowledge by examining the impact of IL and TL on implementing the School Improvement Programme (SIP) in the Ethiopian context designed to foster students’ academic performance. This study randomly sampled and surveyed 2880 public secondary school teachers and 70 principals. The study’s findings suggested that school principals’ personal information, gender, academic qualification, and leadership experience determine their leadership style, the coherence of SIP, and school performance. Unlike previous evidence, this study’s findings shed light on the principals’ IL and TL practice, which significantly impacted students’ academic achievement through the mediating role of coherent SIP.

ABSTRACT In this paper, whole class episodes of metalinguistic talk are examined for their potential to support the development of Key Stage Three (KS3, age 11–14) learners’ metalinguistic understanding of how linguistic choice shapes meaning in written text. Drawing on data from the first phase of a three-year ESRC funded project, this paper explores how teachers’ framing questions foreground and manoeuvre learners’ attention to written text, opening differently framed lines of enquiry that are sustained and advanced by teachers’ responsive talk moves. This paper proposes that teachers’ skilful orchestration of framing questions and responsive talk moves operate to develop metalinguistic understanding by connecting personal, tacit, or partially formed understandings with more explicit verbalisation of the relationship between linguistic choice and rhetorical effect. Presenting a contextually and disciplinary sensitive analysis of dialogic talk in the writing classroom, this paper is of empirical and theoretical significance to the field of dialogic talk, educational linguistics, and writing research, and advances the theorisation of pedagogical approaches that may empower learners to convey and communicate their own meanings and intentions in writing.

ABSTRACT In this paper we use the idea of tensions to describe the ways the Chilean Ministry of Education, schools, and families fail to converge over the enactment of anti-bullying policies and the demands that they place on each party. Although schools have always been charged with prescribing appropriate norms for peer behaviour, a contemporary characteristic of this moral order is the prescriptive and controlling nature of anti-bullying policies. We use a figurational social-ecological perspective to analyse qualitative interview data with teaching and professional staff generated in 12 schools across two Chilean cities. Our findings are focused on staff members’ divergent expectations about the effectiveness and exigencies of anti-bullying policies, and their subjective ideas about childhood and behavioural norms and tendencies. We find they are almost unanimous in reproducing a blame culture that makes socially deprived homes and communities responsible for poorer conduct. In effect this leads the schools to view themselves as disconnected from their surroundings, despite the anti-bullying policies requiring them to have ever-greater chains of dependency with these communities. By combining a figurational perspective with a social-ecological model, we identify webs of action and interdependence across multiple levels (and times) of society affecting how anti-bullying policy is implemented.

ABSTRACT With no consensus regarding an optimal school-entry age, parents must weigh-up numerous factors when given the option to delay a child’s primary school-entry (deferral) on the basis of their age. To explore this, 271 parents living in Scotland with a child born in January/February 2015/16 (50% girls; 65% deferred) were surveyed regarding the deferral decision. Boys were more likely to be deferred than girls, and girls from families in more affluent areas. Parents selecting non-deferral prioritised the social and cognitive stimulation of school, while parents selecting deferral felt that preschool would nurture their child’s socio-emotional skills. Finally, deferred boys were perceived as less socially competent than non-deferred boys. Our findings indicate that parents’ appraisal of their child’s socio-emotional maturity and beliefs regarding school-readiness guide an age-based deferral decision.

ABSTRACT The relational dimension of schooling has been identified as an important aspect of educational professionals’ everyday practices, yet little is known about how mainstream schools go about the day-to-day act of fostering positive and trusting relationships with children and parents. This paper draws on data generated from a case study involving two schools in Wales which sought to understand how schools foster positive relationships with parents and children. Interviews and focus groups with staff, parents and pupils at two community focused schools in Wales revealed that an ethic of care was crucial to the formation of quality trusting relationships between staff, parents and pupils. It will be argued that the caring relationships which school staff grafted with parents and pupils through day-to-day acts were inextricably bound with their wider social contexts and location in areas of significant socio-economic disadvantage. In this sense, these schools’ wider social contexts informed how they interpreted and enacted policy agendas around both academic performance and community schooling. It is therefore suggested that the fostering of a relational dimension of schooling is crucial to the development of a community focused schools’ agenda in Wales.