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Developing readers, developing selves

The process of reading actually changes the neural connections in our brains, enabling new thought processes to form and develop our thinking (Wolf, 2008). Indeed, the experience and act of...

Shifting power in children’s literature: Story Makers Press

Literary criticism of children’s literature focusses on the power relations between the adult writer and the child reader. At one end of the spectrum, this relationship is described as...

Curriculum is – or should be – at the heart of educational practice

New forms of national curriculum emerging worldwide have shifted the focus from input regulation – detailed specification of content to be taught – to output regulation – evaluation of the...

The competing discourses of school readiness

BERA’s 2019–2020 research commission on the early years – entitled Competing Discourses of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Tensions, Impacts and Democratic Alternatives across the...

It’s time to place our students first, by putting feedback first

You’re at work late on a Friday night. The clock reads 9:58pm, and you’ve just finished providing feedback for the very last of your students’ essays. In the corner of your office, you spot...

English literature: An aesthetic form of knowledge

English literature was introduced as an essential component of Britain’s school curriculum in the early 20th century as part of a broader effort to create, inter alia, an education system based...

A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Young children and multimodal learning with tablets

It has become increasingly apparent that being literate is a fundamental skill for citizens of the 21st century, just as it was in previous times, but also that new conceptualisations of what it...

Phonics ‘first and fast’… but at what cost?

Reading is one of life’s profound joys. According to reading expert Maryanne Wolf, reading changes the very structure of our brain and neural pathways; the act allows us to go beyond our own...

BERA Bites, issue 1: Early childhood

BERA Bites

The BERA Bites series presents selected articles from the BERA Blog on key topics in education, presented in an easily printable and digestible format to serve as teaching and learning resources...

Grammar and creativity in the English national curriculum

In November 2017 the Times Educational Supplement (TES) published an article under the headline ‘Teaching grammar does not improve children's writing ability, research finds’ (Bloom 2017)....

Connecting the dots: painting, thesis and writing

I am a newly minted PhD from the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield. Two months after graduation, I am still coming to terms with the ‘what...

The educational implications of Lionel Shriver’s attack on diversity ‘quotas’

‘[I]f an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published,...