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Are there individual differences in developing spatial thinking skills of university students within a web‐based GIS mapping environment?

Spatial thinking as a set of cognitive skills is essential for success in academic, workplace and everyday settings, particularly in the contemporary information age. Existing research shows that...

BERA Blog highlights from 2018

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A seasonal welcome to all our BERA Blog readers in the UK and around the world in this, our third end-of-year-highlights special edition. And what a year this has turned out to be. (I really will...

The neglect of practice

Many BERA members will be very familiar with terms such as evidence-informed practice, evidence-based practice and research-engaged teaching. The recent BERA close-to-practice research project is...

Am I actually teaching historical thinking and reasoning?

Many teachers find it difficult to operationalise ideas from the literature and envisage ‘what it looks like in the classroom’. Teaching historical thinking and reasoning (HTR) is a good...

Supporting early-childhood teachers with integrating a humanoid robot to enhance learning

Anthropomorphic robots are increasingly being used as a technology in early childhood settings, and they have been found to enhance social interaction (Tanaka, Cicourel & Movellan, 2007), support...

Drawing a line in the sand: Reflective practice using ‘sandboxing’ with HE students

The ability to reflect in and on practice (Schön, 1983; 1991) is an integral professional skill within the field of education. This metacognitive process develops effective practitioners and...

A new tool to help teachers as digital learning designers

We began with a sense of mission: to support teachers in making effective use of learning technologies. Educational research has done little so far to help teachers into the digital age; policy...

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...