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BERA is closely monitoring the developments around the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation. Our position as a charity is to do our best to continue the delivery of our activities in as safe and responsible a manner as possible. To this end, we are following the official advice from Public Health England, which is updated on a daily basis, as well as monitoring the guidance and policies of many HEIs.
All our governance meetings continue to be held, albeit online, and we are actively exploring new platforms to enable ongoing interaction and activity.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has affected us all and challenged the way we live, work and learn. This page is where we update our current position as well as post links to relevant work we undertake such as Blogs, commentary and relevant news. Please see below.
Source: Louisa Enyonam Ansah The Covid-19 lockdowns led to a disruption in education for nearly 1.6 billion of the world’s student population (Lennox et al., 2021). As a result, online...
Continue reading blog postThe ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused most postgraduate research (PGR) students to encounter research restrictions and undertake their research duties from home (see Burridge et al., 2020)....
Continue reading blog postThe peaks and troughs of the Covid-19 pandemic continue to impact on almost every aspect of our daily lives, and initial teacher education (ITE) is by no means an exception. Reflecting on changes...
Continue reading blog postInnovations and challenges among reading recovery teachers in Bristol
Maths anxiety (MA) plays a role in educational disparities and the gender pay gap, yet it is not often addressed at the chalkface. Covid-induced school disruption may have made learning for...
Continue reading blog postExploring how teachers collected and used data to make decisions about their practice while working in uncertain, rapidly changing conditions during lockdown and school closures, this report...
School closures implemented during the pandemic to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 meant that parents had to take on home-schooling and extra childcare responsibilities. These responsibilities...
Continue reading blog postResearch on the Covid-19 pandemic draws attention to its unequal impacts on differently positioned families, particularly highlighting the acute struggles of disadvantaged families (see for...
Continue reading blog postFollowing their closure to most students in March 2020, schools in England addressed the pedagogical challenge of remote learning using approaches that varied according not only to school culture...
In April 2020, senior managers from Kids Planet Day Nurseries[1] approached researchers at York St John University to explore the impact of Covid-19 on the young children in their care. Two...
Continue reading blog postThis report presents a mixed-methods investigation of how Covid-19 affected the ways in which teacher educators in Wales engaged their students with learning, and how the switch to online delivery...
In a newly published study (Done & Knowler, 2021a) we investigated the strategic leadership role of special educational needs coordinators (SENCOs) in planning for Covid-19 with particular...
Continue reading blog postDocumenting an explorative qualitative study involving 20 learners with autism aged 14–19 based in the West Midlands region of England, this report considers the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic...
This report asks whether and how special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) participated in Covid-19-induced school planning for lockdown, provision for vulnerable pupils and full school...
Newly qualified teachers (NQTs) have arguably always had tough challenges to overcome; two in every five NQTs experience mental health problems (Education Support Network, 2018). Challenges cited...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted everyday life around the world. In the UK, lockdowns have resulted in the closure of schools to most children for two prolonged periods: March to summer...
Continue reading blog postGovernment decisions made during Covid-19 resulted in the closure of many schools, forcing teachers to move online to ensure that students continued their studies. Described as ‘emergency...
Continue reading blog postA great deal of international research has suggested that teachers struggled with the pivot towards online learning necessitated by the closure of schools in response to the Covid-19...
In this BERA-funded project we investigated how teachers adapted to the ‘new normal’ of online delivery from March 2020 until the reopening of schools on 8 March 2021. Surveys undertaken in...
Continue reading blog postThis series of reports presents the findings and recommendations of 14 research projects that have investigated Covid-19's impact on important aspects of education and educational research. This...
Concerns around lost learning have been a pervasive and recurrent theme of late – all of which can be traced back to the closing of schools over the past year in response to the Covid-19...
Continue reading blog postPaul Willis, in Learning to Labour (Willis, 1977), joins his teenage research subjects in their extracurricular trips to the pub, in the name of holistic ethnography. I used to use this anecdote...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has given new currency to the idea of resilience, in terms of adapting to and recovering from adversity. However, in recent years the discourse of resilience has become...
Continue reading blog postDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, many teachers around the globe found themselves forced to teach in remote or online environments. This blog post explores initial findings about the assessment data...
Continue reading blog postNew teachers might have been expected to experience particular difficulties in moving to remote emergency teaching in March 2020. Funded by a BERA Covid-19 small grant project, we are exploring in...
Continue reading blog postIn December 2020, the Westminster government promised to set up an expert group to consider solutions to the huge variability of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on pupils’ educational...
Continue reading blog postPupils with English as an additional language (EAL) attract a great deal of interest among policymakers, school leaders and teachers, yet there are relatively few studies that have examined EAL...
Continue reading blog postReflections on presenting at the BERA ECR Network symposium, January 2021
Continue reading blog postHigh-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a form of exercise that involves repeated bouts of near-maximal effort often followed by short (60 seconds) recovery times (ACSM, 2014). HIIT is popular...
Continue reading blog postThe strains on the education system caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have forced many parents to have to contend with significant changes in their daily routines. A study of seven countries in...
Continue reading blog postThe evidence is clear that motivated, knowledgeable and experienced staff are key to supporting children’s development in early years settings (see for example Melhuish, Ereky-Stevens, &...
Continue reading blog postSince the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, children across the world have experienced significant changes to their lives. Save the Children (2020, p. 4) report that an estimated 99 per cent of...
Continue reading blog postIn Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the witches exacerbate divisions, push ambition through brute force, hierarchy and power; their interventions end in the wicked destruction of leadership potential and...
Continue reading blog postAs part of the gradual lifting of lockdown measures in England, following the ‘second wave’ of the Covid-19 pandemic here, schools reopen wholesale today, 8 March 2021. For many parents and...
Continue reading blog postEducation research hit the headlines recently. The BBC reported research claiming that time spent out of school due to coronavirus could cost each child £40,000 in lifetime earnings. By the time...
Continue reading blog postOn February 17 2021, Anne Longfield OBE gave her final speech as the children’s commissioner for England. Her words were a clarion cry for the UK’s children, who for the past 12 months have...
Continue reading blog postThe coronavirus pandemic and its associated lockdowns upended our lives and presented challenges and consequences that were previously unimaginable. Teachers were flung in at the deep end with...
The Covid-19 pandemic has created economic and social instability for many people in Britain and around the world. As such, we might consider it an experience of ‘collective trauma’, combining...
Continue reading blog postIn this blog we seek to understand the impact that the sudden and enforced move to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the perceptions of teacher educators in initial teacher...
Continue reading blog postThe disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...
Continue reading blog postIn my November 2020 BERA Blog, ‘Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners’, I reported on the beginnings of a small-scale research project (funded by BERA) to explore the impact...
Continue reading blog postEven before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...
Continue reading blog postLearning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...
Continue reading blog postDido Harding was appointed as a Conservative peer (Baroness Harding of Winscombe) by then prime minister David Cameron in 2014. She is head of the NHS test and trace programme, and has been...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 has presented schools with a series of dilemmas since lockdown began, and continues to do so as schools seek to reopen to all their pupils. There have been few reliable sources of advice...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyday life across the world. In January 2020, we could not have imagined that in just a few months as many as 138 countries would...
Continue reading blog postAt the time of writing, as we move through the Covid-19 pandemic, most children in the UK have been away from school for nearly half a year, no end-of-year public examinations have taken place,...
Continue reading blog postIn response to the challenges imposed by the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown BERA created the Small Grants Fund. This is a fund aimed at supporting Educational Research into timely issues, and we...
This episode of the BERA Podcast explores how how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted primary and post-primary pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) and their families.
In 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic transformed the way we live, work, research, teach and learn. This series explores the impact of the pandemic on our members. Click below to listen to the podcasts...
This episode of the BERA Podcast explores the impact of Covid-19 on Educational Technology
When we went into ‘lockdown’ because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and were denied access to face-to-face education, educators had to swiftly improvise. By transferring existing educational...
Continue reading blog postLong before Covid-19 altered the way learning and teaching takes place, the subject of physical education (PE) was somewhat marginalised in the school curriculum. Within the UK, as elsewhere,...
Continue reading blog postTeachers across the world have never had to work so hard or so creatively. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, professional development that would otherwise have taken years has been crammed...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...
Continue reading blog postThis episode of the BERA Podcast explores the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Curriculum, including the structures involved; and the responses being made.
This episode of the BERA Podcast features an interview with an Assistant Headteacher of an inner city primary school in Yorkshire, who discusses the challenges her school has faced providing for...
In this mini episode Dr Tracy Hayes (University of Cumbria) and Dr Mark Leather (Plymouth Marjon University) discuss the importance of nature, outdoor learning and play before, during and after...
Foundation year programmes aim to prepare ‘widening participation’ students for university-level study, and focus on developing study skills and underpinning knowledge on their chosen subject...
Continue reading blog postIn our first episode, two convenors from the BERA Mental Health, Wellbeing and Education Special Interest Group speak about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their special interest...
In response to the current Covid-19 outbreak, universities across Australia quickly moved to restructure the delivery of their courses that customarily took place on campus. We are both first year...
Continue reading blog postCovid-19 reveals an urgent need to focus on an area of worldwide educational significance: the importance for schools of engaging with uncertainty as a key facet of education. In recent decades, a...
Continue reading blog postI am writing this post from both a parental and scientific perspective. Firstly, from a parental stance, SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent coronavirus 19 has undoubtedly driven us into situations that...
Continue reading blog postPreviously on the BERA blog (Kidd, 2020a) I have drawn attention to the work of Glade Primary School, an east-London school in the borough of Redbridge, England, and their ‘agile’ adoption of...
Continue reading blog postFrom issue 143 of Research Intelligence, BERA's members' magazine.
The ideas presented in this blog were developed in dialogue with a number of English sexuality education organizations, including acetUK, It Happens, Susie March, Think for Yourself, Teaching...
Continue reading blog post‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...
Continue reading blog postAs part of our response to the ongoing COVID-19 situation, BERA is establishing a small grants fund for research into the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). This fund aims to support a...
‘Doing less, making learning fun and looking after everyone’s wellbeing’
Continue reading blog postOn Friday 29 May 2020, ITV ran a story on the London regional news about a primary school whose pupils were reported to be ‘traveling the world’ through the adoption of video conferencing (VC)...
Continue reading blog postAs the world grapples with the short-to-longer-term imperative to identify distance- and remote-learning alternatives to previously face-to-face instruction, I am struck that some of the key...
Continue reading blog postChildren’s education and wellbeing are profoundly influenced by the circumstances into which they are born. Being from a wealthier family is associated with a range of positive outcomes. Poverty...
Continue reading blog postThe pandemic that has gripped the UK has meant that uncertainty becoming central to our way of life. With borders closed, migration curtailed and social distancing policies in place, this...
Continue reading blog postAs recent posts on the BERA Blog have demonstrated, in the quiet chaos of lockdown a range of taken-for-granted assumptions (Courtney et al., 2020), competencies (Zhou & Wolstencroft, 2020) and...
Continue reading blog postDear colleagues, All of us will have spent the past few weeks responding to the implications for our professional and personal lives of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the profound impact it...
A new virtual issue of BJET Online learning and teaching has necessarily come to the fore over the past few weeks and months as we adapt to Covid-19. In a new virtual issue of the British Journal...
Almost all dimensions of human experience have been affected by the Covid-19 outbreak, and governments around the world have adopted stringent measures to stop the spread of the virus. One such...
Continue reading blog postIn the public debate about the impacts of the Covid-19 lockdown on education, much attention has understandably been given to concerns about disadvantaged children falling behind at school, and to...
Continue reading blog postDiscussion among researchers at the moment is mostly punctuated with references to Covid-19. From across the various fields that my research cross-sections – primary English, children’s...
Continue reading blog postWithin this current context, the term ‘home schooling’ is often deployed in a blanket way to describe what is likely to be a plethora of activities and methods of teaching and learning largely...
Continue reading blog postThe Covid-19 pandemic means that countless students and educational staff are expected to continue their work from home. The worldwide quarantine has been a game-changer, blurring the boundaries...
Continue reading blog postDue to the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all going through a period unlike any we have ever experienced. With respect to teaching and learning, students can’t attend school and universities – and...
Continue reading blog postIn a previous blog (published yesterday) I reflected on the danger of researchers going beyond the evidence in presenting policy-relevant findings: putting forward empirical conclusions as cogent...
Continue reading blog postLast year I conducted a research project with 12 early-career primary teachers. While exploring their sense of purpose, I found that many teachers were driven by a commitment to preparing their...
Continue reading blog postAs the whole planet finds itself engulfed in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that the public needs to be well equipped with the skills to deal with scientific...
Continue reading blog postCOVID-19 has, over the last few weeks and months, transformed the way we live, work, research, teach and learn. The BERA community has not only an opportunity but a responsibility to provide...
James Derounian of the Association of National Teaching Fellows offers tips on delivering quality distance-learning for quarantined students.
Continue reading blog postEducation has been practised and conceptualised internationally in ways that demonstrate its increasing privatisation, enabled through a dependency on numerical data and an adherence to a social...
Continue reading blog postIf we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...
Continue reading blog postDear colleagues, We are all living through a life-changing situation, something that continues to raise many profound issues. Education is one of the many vital parts of society that has been...
BERA is closely monitoring the developments around the coronavirus (COVID-19) situation. Our position as a charity is to do our best to continue the delivery of our activities in as safe and...
