Playful creativity
‘Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do.’ (Attributed to Jean Piaget) Learning is often compromised by competitiveness (Brown & Vaughan, 2009). Bred from the...
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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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Playful interventions: Measuring impact on learning
Figure 1: PMM tracking individuals’ understanding of ‘playfulness and me’ over the course of several workshops and a field trip. Red text was added before any workshops were...
Continue reading blog postConnection and creativity despite Covid-19: Playful learning at university during the pandemic
Over the past decade, interest in play and playful learning in higher education (HE) has grown significantly (James & Brookfield, 2014; James & Nerantzi, 2019). Publications, conferences and...
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Does playfulness have a place in higher education? A reflection on using playfulness when teaching research methods to postgraduate students
Playfulness has been defined as a disposition (Barnett, 1991) a mindset (Skilbeck, 2017) and fundamental for creativity (Cheng-Ping Chang, 2013). I have spent many years working in play and...
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Playful praxis: A student’s perspective
Now in my fifth year of higher education (HE), I am in the unfortunate position to have more years as an undergraduate to reflect on than most, yet still have more to look forward to. Yes, I am a...
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Music teachers are curriculum designers
It is fair to say that the model music curriculum has caused quite a stir in music classrooms in England. A national curriculum already exists for music, and while it is only statutory for around...
Continue reading blog postHow can we teach for transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies in a high autonomy curriculum?
New Zealand’s 2007 curriculum reform has received international attention for its high level of curricular autonomy, learner-centred ideologies and adoption of 21st-century skills, competencies...
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Contemporary curriculum debates in early childhood education and care
With the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) becoming statutory, the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) special interest group arranged a webinar series to provide space for wider...
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Is it still worth calculating Progress 8?
Education systems around the world increasingly monitor school performance and hold schools to account using student data from high-stakes examinations (OECD, 2008; NFER, 2018). England has been...
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