The £350 billion home-schooling question
Education research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
Blog Series
Covid-19, education and educational research
Covid-19 has transformed the way we live, work, research, teach and learn. This ongoing series of blogs addresses the crisis as it affects education in all its diversity.
Our contributors summarise new research, find new applications for existing scholarship, and share opinions, experiences and advice. Our intention is that this collection helps all stakeholders in education to navigate this new landscape, and to thrive both within and beyond it.
We continue to invite contributions to the BERA Blog that address the Covid-19 crisis, including but by no means limited to issues like distance learning and educational technology; the logistical, methodological and ethical challenges of conducting research remotely; and the effects of the crisis on staffing, funding and policy across the sector. Tell our readership how you’ve been impacted, how we can and should respond, and what we haven’t thought of yet. See our submissions policy page for details of how to contribute.
What ‘building back better’ really means for our children: Anne Longfield’s final speech as the children’s commissioner for England
On February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...
Conducting research during the pandemic using an ‘ethics of care’
The Covid-19 pandemic has created economic and social instability for many people in Britain and around the world. As such, we might consider it an experience of ‘collective trauma’, combining...
How has Covid-19 affected the way in which teacher educators engage their students with learning?
In this blog we seek to understand the impact that the sudden and enforced move to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the perceptions of teacher educators in initial teacher...
Access denied: Education in rural India during Covid-19
The disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...
Silver linings: Lockdown legacies
In my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...
Education during a pandemic: Lessons from the United Arab Emirates
Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...
Learning loss or learning disruption?
Alarm has been expressed about the likely impact of Covid-19 on children’s academic achievement with terms such as ‘closing the gap’, ‘learning loss’ and ‘catch up’ permeating...
The impact of Covid-19 and the UK public lockdown on postgraduate research students in the UK
While disruption to educational ‘norms’ has received coverage since the public lockdown, less attention has been shown to the impact of the public lockdown on postgraduate research students....
Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners
Learning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...
The fragilities in the English education system revealed by Covid-19, and how to put them right
Covid-19 has presented schools with a series of dilemmas since lockdown began, and continues to do so as schools seek to reopen to all their pupils. There have been few reliable sources of advice...
Maths at the kitchen table: Capturing teacher and family voices on online teaching and learning in Covid-19 times
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life across the world. In January 2020, we could not have imagined that in just a few months as many as 138 countries would...
Closing the Covid-19 gap: Where should interventions begin?
This year coronavirus has put unprecedented pressure on our schools. It has been inspiring, as we continued to support our young people through the global pandemic, to see so many creative...
English instrumental music teaching: A model for authentic learning
At the time of writing, as we move through the Covid-19 pandemic, most children in the UK have been away from school for nearly half a year, no end-of-year public examinations have taken place,...
Post Covid-19: A ‘brave new world’?
Globally, the impact of Covid-19 has been truly unprecedented and unforeseen. In all sectors of society, in all nations, the almost immediate, total suspension of everything we know has left many...
The increasing need to educate children about their rights: An outcome of lockdown measures
Many children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...
Children’s reflections on home education during the Covid-19 pandemic: Implications for the return to school
As school leaders plan the return to school following the global pandemic, it is crucial that their educational decisions are informed by research into the everyday realities of enforced home...
The thin line between gaming and learning
When we went into ‘lockdown’ because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were denied access to face-to-face education, educators had to swiftly improvise. By transferring existing educational...
‘PE’ with Joe (Bloggs): The rise and risks of celebrity ‘teachers’
Long before Covid-19 altered the way learning and teaching takes place, the subject of physical education (PE) was somewhat marginalised in the school curriculum. Within the UK, as elsewhere,...
Online education: What will we keep as lockdown ends?
Teachers across the world have never had to work so hard or so creatively. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, professional development that would otherwise have taken years has been crammed...
Adapting to the new normal in survey research
Covid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...
‘Can everybody hear me?’: Foundation year students’ experiences of studying during lockdown
Foundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...
Renegotiating teacher identities: Reflections on student wellbeing and online learning during Covid-19
In response to the current Covid-19 outbreak, universities across Australia quickly moved to restructure the delivery of their courses that customarily took place on campus. We are both first year...
Virtual teaching for children with dyslexia: The realities and disturbing absence of research
I am writing this post from both a parental and scientific perspective. Firstly, from a parental stance, SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent coronavirus 19 has undoubtedly driven us into situations that...
Agility, return and recovery: Our new Covid context for schooling and teacher education?
Previously on the BERA blog (Kidd, 2020a) I have drawn attention to the work of Glade Primary School, an east-London school in the borough of Redbridge, England, and their ‘agile’ adoption of...
Researching the world in uncertain times: The role of bricolage
‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...
Identifying the potential impacts of Covid-19 on school-based sexuality education
The ideas presented in this blog were developed in dialogue with a number of English sexuality education organizations, including acetUK, It Happens, Susie March, Think for Yourself, Teaching...
Lessons for adapting home learning from parents with children with special educational needs
‘Doing less, making learning fun and looking after everyone’s wellbeing’
The rise of the flexible and remote teacher: A primary school’s response to the Covid-19 context in London
On Friday 29 May 2020, ITV ran a story on the London regional news about a primary school whose pupils were reported to be ‘traveling the world’ through the adoption of video conferencing (VC)...
School transition, socioeconomic inequalities in wellbeing and the Covid-19 pandemic
Children’s education and wellbeing are profoundly influenced by the circumstances into which they are born. Being from a wealthier family is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Poverty...
Social constructivism and participative learning beyond bricks and mortar
As the world grapples with the short-to-longer-term imperative to identify distance- and remote-learning alternatives to previously face-to-face instruction, I am struck that some of the key...
International students and Covid-19: What is the current advice?
The pandemic that has gripped the UK has meant that uncertainty becoming central to our way of life. With borders closed, migration curtailed and social distancing policies in place, this...
Time for educational researchers to take their place in the sun?
As recent posts on the BERA Blog have demonstrated, in the quiet chaos of lockdown a range of taken-for-granted assumptions (Courtney et al., 2020), competencies (Zhou & Wolstencroft, 2020) and...
Online teacher education in times of Covid-19
Almost all dimensions of human experience have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, and governments around the world have adopted stringent measures to stop the spread of the virus. One such...
Making post-GCSE decisions during the Covid-19 crisis: The need for action
In the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school, and to...
Opportunities missed: Then the rains came down and washed the writing away
Discussion among researchers at the moment is mostly punctuated with references to Covid-19. From across the various fields that my research cross-sections – primary English, children’s...
Should we really call this home schooling? Reflections from the research field
Within this current context, the term ‘home schooling’ is often deployed in a blanket way to describe what is likely to be a plethora of activities and methods of teaching and learning largely...
Quarantined at home? Craft productive learningscapes and workspaces through the use of recorded music
The Covid-19 pandemic means that countless students and educational staff are expected to continue their work from home. The worldwide quarantine has been a game-changer, blurring the boundaries...
What you need to know to get the best from online education: A BJET/JCAL virtual special issue
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all going through a period unlike any we have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, students can’t attend school and universities – and...
Going beyond the evidence: Research and the media
In a previous blog (published yesterday) I reflected on the danger of researchers going beyond the evidence in presenting policy-relevant findings: putting forward empirical conclusions as cogent...
Education, children’s futures and Covid-19
Last year I conducted a research project with 12 early-career primary teachers. While exploring their sense of purpose, I found that many teachers were driven by a commitment to preparing their...
Five education myths that Covid-19 shatters
Education has been practised and conceptualised internationally in ways that demonstrate its increasing privatisation, enabled through a dependency on numerical data and an adherence to a social...
Practical science and pandemics
As the whole planet finds itself engulfed in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the public needs to be well equipped with the skills to deal with scientific...
Collaborative distance-learning in a time of coronavirus
James Derounian of the Association of National Teaching Fellows offers tips on delivering quality distance-learning for quarantined students.
Digital masters? Reflecting on the readiness of students and staff for digital learning
If we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...
Content in this series
Digital masters? Reflecting on the readiness of students and staff for digital learning
If we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...
Continue reading blog post
Five education myths that Covid-19 shatters
Education has been practised and conceptualised internationally in ways that demonstrate its increasing privatisation, enabled through a dependency on numerical data and an adherence to a social...
Continue reading blog post
Collaborative distance-learning in a time of coronavirus
James Derounian of the Association of National Teaching Fellows offers tips on delivering quality distance-learning for quarantined students.
Continue reading blog post
Practical science and pandemics
As the whole planet finds itself engulfed in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the public needs to be well equipped with the skills to deal with scientific...
Continue reading blog post
Education, children’s futures and Covid-19
Last year I conducted a research project with 12 early-career primary teachers. While exploring their sense of purpose, I found that many teachers were driven by a commitment to preparing their...
Continue reading blog postGoing beyond the evidence: Research and the media
In a previous blog (published yesterday) I reflected on the danger of researchers going beyond the evidence in presenting policy-relevant findings: putting forward empirical conclusions as cogent...
Continue reading blog post
What you need to know to get the best from online education: A BJET/JCAL virtual special issue
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all going through a period unlike any we have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, students can’t attend school and universities – and...
Continue reading blog post
Quarantined at home? Craft productive learningscapes and workspaces through the use of recorded music
The Covid-19 pandemic means that countless students and educational staff are expected to continue their work from home. The worldwide quarantine has been a game-changer, blurring the boundaries...
Continue reading blog post
Should we really call this home schooling? Reflections from the research field
Within this current context, the term ‘home schooling’ is often deployed in a blanket way to describe what is likely to be a plethora of activities and methods of teaching and learning largely...
Continue reading blog post
Opportunities missed: Then the rains came down and washed the writing away
Discussion among researchers at the moment is mostly punctuated with references to Covid-19. From across the various fields that my research cross-sections – primary English, children’s...
Continue reading blog postMaking post-GCSE decisions during the Covid-19 crisis: The need for action
In the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school, and to...
Continue reading blog post
Online teacher education in times of Covid-19
Almost all dimensions of human experience have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, and governments around the world have adopted stringent measures to stop the spread of the virus. One such...
Continue reading blog post
Time for educational researchers to take their place in the sun?
As recent posts on the BERA Blog have demonstrated, in the quiet chaos of lockdown a range of taken-for-granted assumptions (Courtney et al., 2020), competencies (Zhou & Wolstencroft, 2020) and...
Continue reading blog post
International students and Covid-19: What is the current advice?
The pandemic that has gripped the UK has meant that uncertainty becoming central to our way of life. With borders closed, migration curtailed and social distancing policies in place, this...
Continue reading blog post
School transition, socioeconomic inequalities in wellbeing and the Covid-19 pandemic
Children’s education and wellbeing are profoundly influenced by the circumstances into which they are born. Being from a wealthier family is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Poverty...
Continue reading blog post
Social constructivism and participative learning beyond bricks and mortar
As the world grapples with the short-to-longer-term imperative to identify distance- and remote-learning alternatives to previously face-to-face instruction, I am struck that some of the key...
Continue reading blog post
The rise of the flexible and remote teacher: A primary school’s response to the Covid-19 context in London
On Friday 29 May 2020, ITV ran a story on the London regional news about a primary school whose pupils were reported to be ‘traveling the world’ through the adoption of video conferencing (VC)...
Continue reading blog post
Lessons for adapting home learning from parents with children with special educational needs
‘Doing less, making learning fun and looking after everyone’s wellbeing’
Continue reading blog post
Researching the world in uncertain times: The role of bricolage
‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...
Continue reading blog post
Identifying the potential impacts of Covid-19 on school-based sexuality education
The ideas presented in this blog were developed in dialogue with a number of English sexuality education organizations, including acetUK, It Happens, Susie March, Think for Yourself, Teaching...
Continue reading blog post
Agility, return and recovery: Our new Covid context for schooling and teacher education?
Previously on the BERA blog (Kidd, 2020a) I have drawn attention to the work of Glade Primary School, an east-London school in the borough of Redbridge, England, and their ‘agile’ adoption of...
Continue reading blog postVirtual teaching for children with dyslexia: The realities and disturbing absence of research
I am writing this post from both a parental and scientific perspective. Firstly, from a parental stance, SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent coronavirus 19 has undoubtedly driven us into situations that...
Continue reading blog post
Covid-19 and schooling for uncertainty
Covid-19 reveals an urgent need to focus on an area of worldwide educational significance: the importance for schools of engaging with uncertainty as a key facet of education. In recent decades, a...
Continue reading blog post
Renegotiating teacher identities: Reflections on student wellbeing and online learning during Covid-19
In response to the current Covid-19 outbreak, universities across Australia quickly moved to restructure the delivery of their courses that customarily took place on campus. We are both first year...
Continue reading blog post
‘Can everybody hear me?’: Foundation year students’ experiences of studying during lockdown
Foundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...
Continue reading blog post
Adapting to the new normal in survey research
Covid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...
Continue reading blog post
Online education: What will we keep as lockdown ends?
Teachers across the world have never had to work so hard or so creatively. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, professional development that would otherwise have taken years has been crammed...
Continue reading blog post
‘PE’ with Joe (Bloggs): The rise and risks of celebrity ‘teachers’
Long before Covid-19 altered the way learning and teaching takes place, the subject of physical education (PE) was somewhat marginalised in the school curriculum. Within the UK, as elsewhere,...
Continue reading blog post
The thin line between gaming and learning
When we went into ‘lockdown’ because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were denied access to face-to-face education, educators had to swiftly improvise. By transferring existing educational...
Continue reading blog post
Children’s reflections on home education during the Covid-19 pandemic: Implications for the return to school
As school leaders plan the return to school following the global pandemic, it is crucial that their educational decisions are informed by research into the everyday realities of enforced home...
Continue reading blog post
The increasing need to educate children about their rights: An outcome of lockdown measures
Many children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...
Continue reading blog post
Post Covid-19: A ‘brave new world’?
Globally, the impact of Covid-19 has been truly unprecedented and unforeseen. In all sectors of society, in all nations, the almost immediate, total suspension of everything we know has left many...
Continue reading blog post
English instrumental music teaching: A model for authentic learning
At the time of writing, as we move through the Covid-19 pandemic, most children in the UK have been away from school for nearly half a year, no end-of-year public examinations have taken place,...
Continue reading blog post
Closing the Covid-19 gap: Where should interventions begin?
This year coronavirus has put unprecedented pressure on our schools. It has been inspiring, as we continued to support our young people through the global pandemic, to see so many creative...
Continue reading blog post
Maths at the kitchen table: Capturing teacher and family voices on online teaching and learning in Covid-19 times
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life across the world. In January 2020, we could not have imagined that in just a few months as many as 138 countries would...
Continue reading blog post
The fragilities in the English education system revealed by Covid-19, and how to put them right
Covid-19 has presented schools with a series of dilemmas since lockdown began, and continues to do so as schools seek to reopen to all their pupils. There have been few reliable sources of advice...
Continue reading blog post
Could Dido Harding move into education next?
Dido Harding was appointed as a Conservative peer (Baroness Harding of Winscombe) by then prime minister David Cameron in 2014. She is head of the NHS test and trace programme, and has been...
Continue reading blog postThe impact of Covid-19 and the UK public lockdown on postgraduate research students in the UK
While disruption to educational ‘norms’ has received coverage since the public lockdown, less attention has been shown to the impact of the public lockdown on postgraduate research students....
Continue reading blog post
Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners
Learning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...
Continue reading blog post
Learning loss or learning disruption?
Alarm has been expressed about the likely impact of Covid-19 on children’s academic achievement with terms such as ‘closing the gap’, ‘learning loss’ and ‘catch up’ permeating...
Continue reading blog post
Education during a pandemic: Lessons from the United Arab Emirates
Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...
Continue reading blog post
Silver linings: Lockdown legacies
In my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...
Continue reading blog postAccess denied: Education in rural India during Covid-19
The disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...
Continue reading blog post
How has Covid-19 affected the way in which teacher educators engage their students with learning?
In this blog we seek to understand the impact that the sudden and enforced move to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the perceptions of teacher educators in initial teacher...
Continue reading blog post
Conducting research during the pandemic using an ‘ethics of care’
The Covid-19 pandemic has created economic and social instability for many people in Britain and around the world. As such, we might consider it an experience of ‘collective trauma’, combining...
Continue reading blog post
What ‘building back better’ really means for our children: Anne Longfield’s final speech as the children’s commissioner for England
On February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...
Continue reading blog post
The £350 billion home-schooling question
Education research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
Continue reading blog post
‘The significant return to normality’: Back to school in England, but who is missing?
As part of the gradual lifting of lockdown measures in England, following the ‘second wave’ of the Covid-19 pandemic here, schools reopen wholesale today, 8 March 2021. For many parents and...
Continue reading blog post
Bubble, toil and trouble: School leadership as Shakespearean tragedy in and after Covid-19
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches exacerbate divisions, push ambition through brute force, hierarchy and power; their interventions end in the wicked destruction of leadership potential and...
Continue reading blog postChildren have a right to be involved in decisions about their future education, health and wellbeing
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, children across the world have experienced significant changes to their lives. Save the Children (2020, p. 4) report that an estimated 99 per cent of...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic and the early years workforce
The evidence is clear that motivated, knowledgeable and experienced staff are key to supporting children’s development in early years settings (see for example Melhuish, Ereky-Stevens, &...
Continue reading blog post
Empowering marginalised parents to undertake home-schooling during Covid-19
The strains on the education system caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have forced many parents to have to contend with significant changes in their daily routines. A study of seven countries in...
Continue reading blog post
Is it okay to HIIT in primary physical education?
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a form of exercise that involves repeated bouts of near-maximal effort often followed by short (60 seconds) recovery times (ACSM, 2014). HIIT is popular...
Continue reading blog post
Reimagining creative research methods & collaborative relationships in the context of Covid-19
Reflections on presenting at the BERA ECR Network symposium, January 2021
Continue reading blog postThe impact of school closures on pupils with English as an additional language
Pupils with English as an additional language (EAL) attract a great deal of interest among policymakers, school leaders and teachers, yet there are relatively few studies that have examined EAL...
Continue reading blog post
We need an evidence-based expert approach to the post-pandemic recovery of young people
In December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...
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New teachers’ responses to Covid-19: Getting by or getting ahead?
New teachers might have been expected to experience particular difficulties in moving to remote emergency teaching in March 2020. Funded by a BERA Covid-19 small grant project, we are exploring in...
Continue reading blog post
What have we learned about effectively using assessment data during remote learning over the past year?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, many teachers around the globe found themselves forced to teach in remote or online environments. This blog post explores initial findings about the assessment data...
Continue reading blog post
The problems with resilience thinking
The Covid-19 pandemic has given new currency to the idea of resilience, in terms of adapting to and recovering from adversity. However, in recent years the discourse of resilience has become...
Continue reading blog post
Researching in Covid-era schools
Paul Willis, in Learning to Labour (Willis, 1977), joins his teenage research subjects in their extracurricular trips to the pub, in the name of holistic ethnography. I used to use this anecdote...
Continue reading blog post
Is ‘lost learning’ the new crisis in education?
Concerns around lost learning have been a pervasive and recurrent theme of late – all of which can be traced back to the closing of schools over the past year in response to the Covid-19...
Continue reading blog postHow do we teach English when schools are ‘closed’?
In this BERA-funded project we investigated how teachers adapted to the ‘new normal’ of online delivery from March 2020 until the reopening of schools on 8 March 2021. Surveys undertaken in...
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Lessons learned from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on young people with autism
The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic affected all educational institutions without warning. From our experience, it seems that special schools, particularly those that work with young people with...
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Covid-19: Transitioning back to school
Government decisions made during Covid-19 resulted in the closure of many schools, forcing teachers to move online to ensure that students continued their studies. Described as ‘emergency...
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Emergency remote learning in the UK: A comparison of March 2020 and January 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted everyday life around the world. In the UK, lockdowns have resulted in the closure of schools to most children for two prolonged periods: March to summer...
Continue reading blog post
How newly qualified teachers are coping in the time of Covid-19
Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) have arguably always had tough challenges to overcome; two in every five NQTs experience mental health problems (Education Support Network, 2018). Challenges cited...
Continue reading blog postSENCOs, crisis planning in schools and the international problem of ‘off rolling’ or ‘grey exclusions’
In a newly published study (Done & Knowler, 2021a) we investigated the strategic leadership role of special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) in planning for Covid-19 with particular...
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The impact of Covid-19 on children in early years settings
In April 2020, senior managers from Kids Planet Day Nurseries[1] approached researchers at York St John University to explore the impact of Covid-19 on the young children in their care. Two...
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Learning from lockdown: Experiences of autistic children and young people and their families
Research on the Covid-19 pandemic draws attention to its unequal impacts on differently positioned families, particularly highlighting the acute struggles of disadvantaged families (see for...
Continue reading blog post
The impact of home-schooling on family wellbeing: Working mothers’ perspectives
School closures implemented during the pandemic to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 meant that parents had to take on home-schooling and extra childcare responsibilities. These responsibilities...
Continue reading blog post
The fear factor: Children’s post-lockdown maths anxiety
Maths anxiety (MA) plays a role in educational disparities and the gender pay gap, yet it is not often addressed at the chalkface. Covid-induced school disruption may have made learning for...
Continue reading blog post
Distance learning & initial teacher education: Making connections in a virtual world
The peaks and troughs of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to impact on almost every aspect of our daily lives, and initial teacher education (ITE) is by no means an exception. Reflecting on changes...
Continue reading blog post
Postgraduate research students’ experiences of the coronavirus pandemic
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused most postgraduate research (PGR) students to encounter research restrictions and undertake their research duties from home (see Burridge et al., 2020)....
Continue reading blog post
A matter of inclusion: Schools continue to navigate government advice in support of students
As the school year in England begins once again against an evolving Covid-19 backdrop, we ask what this latest set of circumstances means for issues of inclusion, including which students will...
Continue reading blog postConsidering teacher wellbeing and commitment to teaching in the event of a ‘firebreak’ lockdown this autumn
There are reports that an October lockdown might be used as a ‘firebreak’ if cases of the Covid-19 virus rise too high with the return of schools and universities (Mason & Davis, 2021). As...
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Supporting teachers who have trained during the pandemic to thrive in their first year of teaching: A guide for secondary schools
Everyone who has worked in schools and in initial teacher education (ITE) will remember 2020–21 as one of significant disruption and challenge, and none more so than those whose professional...
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Covid-19 school closures, working from home and family challenges: A novel solution
Covid-19 presented a set of challenges for UK universities, and where ‘business as usual’ was expected, staff working practices intensified. The impact of this has not been equal, with the...
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Online in-depth interviewing: Covid-induced challenges
Lived experiences do not vanish into thin air like a mirage. They can be revisited under certain conditions using a relevant qualitative method. Simply asserting that a one-to-one in-depth...
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The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the academic, psychological and sociocultural adaptation of international students in the UK
Although there is a well-established literature on the international student experience (Schartner & Young, 2020), we know relatively little about what ‘being an international student’ has...
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‘It has been an uphill battle from the get-go’: Studying, single parenthood, and the Covid-19 pandemic
One-quarter of all families in the UK are single-parent families (Gingerbread, 2019), yet literature suggests that single-parent students face challenges in accessing, participating in and...
Continue reading blog postUnderstanding and mitigating the impact of Covid-19 disruption on trainee and early career teachers in secondary schools
Covid-19 has led to significant disruption in the established systems and practices of preparing new teachers. This blog post reports on the findings and recommendations from an Economic and...
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School transitions and adjustment of children with neurodevelopmental conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic: Who was caught up in a whirlwind?
Transition from primary to secondary school is considered a key milestone in children’s education. During the Covid-19 pandemic, children experienced additional changes in their lives...
Continue reading blog post
