Performative education policy and the challenges for teachers with specific learning differences

Presently there are gaps in the body of research on teachers with specific learning differences (SpLDs). Where research on the matter does exist, it tends to focus on resilience strategies in...

To thrive, new teachers need environments of trust

Having just attended BERA’s Annual Conference at the University of Northumbria, I have been reflecting on the diverse range of talks I attended, and some of the key research messages that I...

How might teacher design help to support sustainable innovation in higher education?

Higher education around the world is facing the significant challenge of providing excellent teaching in response to complex, shifting pressures. Institutions must adapt to changing student...

Easier access to quality CPD for teachers while saving the taxpayer money: Can it really be this easy?

If someone were to come up with an idea that would facilitate the take-up by teachers of CPD of proven quality that would reduce teacher debt and, at the same time, save the taxpayer money, most...

Shared understandings of technology to support children’s digital citizenship

For young children, understandings of technology as a cultural tool are both ‘inherited and transformed’ (Rogoff 2003: 51), and often differ from previous generations’ perceptions of...

Netnography: exploring ‘innovative’ approaches to research

My PhD focusses on how online teacher-learning communities may support professional development, and as a relatively new researcher I was aware that, to address the subject, I needed to build my...

Robots in the classroom? Preparing for the automation of teaching

Artificial Intelligence in educational research and practice

Fifty years after Stanley Kubrick introduced cinemagoers to HAL9000, the prospect of a robot-infused world still feels more science fiction than social fact. Yet robots are steadily beginning to...

Linking environmental science to the curriculum for Excellence on an initial teacher training programme

The focus of Scottish initial teacher training programmes on numeracy, literacy and child development has undergone change over the last few decades, primarily due to the requirements set out in...

Teacher education: A weapon of mass instruction?

Two drivers influence nation states engaging in systemic educational reform: a baffling array of metrics on the subject of learning, performance and effectiveness; and the policy impact of...