An opportunity for change?
the benchmarks of what is deemed acceptable in terms of school improvement are apparently edged up each year Nationally, the speed of change involving education policy is rapid and much of...
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The BERA Blog was established in 2015 to provide research-informed content on key educational issues in an accessible manner.
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Much ado about something: The effects of the National Student Survey on higher education
This research (for the British Academy/Leverhulme) set out to gather evidence on the effects of the National Student Survey (NSS) ten years after its introduction. The effects of the survey go...
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Structure of professional doctorate programmes
Is it any wonder that there is discussion about the structure of such programmes and what works best for those concerned? What is a doctoral programme? An advanced study of a defined topic? A...
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‘Turning Schools Inside Out’: Developing Curriculum with Community Partners
In this blog I will be arguing that it would be extremely beneficial for many schools to engage in community curriculum making (CCM) whereby some of the curriculum is developed with community...
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How could MOOCs help us to think differently about learning and teaching in the 21st century?
Many are sceptical about the impact of MOOCs on the higher education landscape while others argue that we need to wait before we evaluate the experiment. Regardless of which side of the...
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When the poor relation comes to town! Education’s contribution to social science research methods
Maintaining global competitiveness in a fast-changing data landscape requires ongoing investment of resource For some time the development of research capacity has been a concern amongst...
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How do you measure a national curriculum?
One of the trends in educational research has been towards more sophisticated understandings about which research methods are appropriate to answer particular research questions. For example a...
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Statutory PSHE education – what more can we do?
In February, the Commons Education Committee recommended that Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, the subject which teaches pupils to keep healthy and safe and prepares them...
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Student Councils: Partnerships and Arguments
I read somewhere (maybe in J G Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, but I stand to be corrected) about events in some prisoner of war camps in Singapore, as the Japanese troops withdrew towards the end...
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