The BERA Blog was established in 2015 to provide research-informed content on key educational issues in an accessible manner.
Literary criticism of children’s literature focusses on the power relations between the adult writer and the child reader. At one end of the spectrum, this relationship is described as...
Continue reading blog postNew forms of national curriculum emerging worldwide have shifted the focus from input regulation – detailed specification of content to be taught – to output regulation – evaluation of the...
Continue reading blog postBERA’s 2019–2020 research commission on the early years – entitled Competing Discourses of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Tensions, Impacts and Democratic Alternatives across the...
Continue reading blog postYou’re at work late on a Friday night. The clock reads 9:58pm, and you’ve just finished providing feedback for the very last of your students’ essays. In the corner of your office, you spot...
Continue reading blog post
English literature was introduced as an essential component of Britain’s school curriculum in the early 20th century as part of a broader effort to create, inter alia, an education system based...
Continue reading blog post
It has become increasingly apparent that being literate is a fundamental skill for citizens of the 21st century, just as it was in previous times, but also that new conceptualisations of what it...
Continue reading blog post
Reading is one of life’s profound joys. According to reading expert Maryanne Wolf, reading changes the very structure of our brain and neural pathways; the act allows us to go beyond our own...
Continue reading blog post
In November 2017 the Times Educational Supplement (TES) published an article under the headline ‘Teaching grammar does not improve children's writing ability, research finds’ (Bloom 2017)....
Continue reading blog post
I am a newly minted PhD from the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield. Two months after graduation, I am still coming to terms with the ‘what...
Continue reading blog post