Past event
Co-hosted with London Metropolitan University.
This was the first joint event between Socio-Cultural and CHAT and Early Childhood and Care SIG. This event brought together researchers at all career stages to share their work in Early Childhood Education (ECE) that takes a sociocultural approach or a Cultural Historical Activity Theory perspective. These theories recognise that children’s development is shaped by interactions, relationships, and the environment, and that children are active creators of knowledge, constructing and modifying their practices and understandings through their experiences and social interactions.
Early Childhood Education is facing multiple challenges in the current socio-political context including the funding crisis, the impact on recruitment and retainment of staff in the early years workforce, and austerity policies. Furthermore, the full impact that the COVID lockdown has had on children’s learning, development and readiness for school is already emerging and is likely to exacerbate existing inequalities at this critical stage. We invite academics, teachers and research students to consider how these current challenges in ECE can be addressed, and the possibilities of new framings towards a more holistic, agentic and democratic way of working with young children.
We aimed to facilitate a discursive and collaborative space where relevant stakeholders can come together to discuss current debates in early childhood education with a focus on socio-cultural theories and practices.
Featured keynote talks by Professor Iram Siraj and Dr Liz Chesworth.
Lecturer at University of Sheffield
Louise Kay is a lecturer in early childhood in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. She is a qualified teacher and has worked across all three primary key stages, with the majority of her career spent teaching in the early...
Senior Lecturer in Education at London Metropolitan University
Mabel has a strong commitment and passion for equality, diversity, and social inclusion. She is a Senior Lecturer in Education at London Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on creative strategies for learning and teaching, including...
Senior Lecturer at University of Roehampton
I am a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, Centre for Learning, Teaching and Human Development, School of Education, Froebel College, University of Roehampton. I had worked in schools and further education in China and a nursery school in...
Lecturer at Brunel University
Lewis Fogarty is a director of a small group of nurseries in Berkshire and director of Teaching and Learning for the Department of Education at Brunel University, lecturing in leadership and management. His EdD research brings these areas...
Senior Lecturer in early childhood education at University of Sheffield
Liz Chesworth is a Senior Lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Sheffield. Liz’s research focuses upon contemporary play cultures and dynamic approaches to curriculum in early childhood. In recent years she has led two...
Professor at University of Oxford & University of Maynooth
Iram has an international reputation for longitudinal research and policy expertise, she has co-directed a number of influential studies, including the Effective Provision of Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE, DfE, 1997-2015)...
Fostering Insight and Innovation in Socio-Cultural and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
The editors of the Review of Education (RoE) intend to publish a number of ‘State-of-Play' (SoP) special issues during their tenure, which commenced in January 2024. They are therefore seeking...
Since 2014 BERA has awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship to recipients who are deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to educational research over their career. Named in honour of our first...
The fifth edition of BERA’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research has been revised and updated to enable researchers to conduct their work to the highest ethical standards in any and all...