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Curriculum development through professional enquiry: Developments in Wales

Since the publication of Graham Donaldson’s report in 2015 (Donaldson, 2015) and the adoption of its recommendations by the Welsh Government, pioneer schools across Wales have been taking the...

Having a handle on time, sacrifice and resilience: Further anecdotal tales in pursuit of the elusive doctorate

In this blog, we consider the more practical aspects of completing a PhD – namely time, sacrifice and resilience. Having a ‘handle on time’ is a very important aspect of the PhD journey. We...

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...

Researchers drawing on teachers’ tools: Picturebooks with migrant learners

This blog post springs from a symposium I convened at BERA Conference 2018 entitled ‘Using creative methods to explore complex topics with young participants’. The symposium reflected my...

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...

Action research in the classroom: Applying spacing and retrieval practice

I have been a classroom teacher for nearly two decades, but have only recently undertaken action research. In this post I describe my experiences with spacing (Bjork & Bjork, 2014; Cepeda et al,...

How can cognitive load theory be applied to the teaching of history?

As a follower of a variety of educational blogs and their Twitter accounts, I became aware of a large number of people talking about the development of cognitive load theory and the impact it...

The battle against being educated

I have been publicly exploring the issue of disruption, violence and students’ challenging behaviour in post-school classrooms since 2000 (Lebor, 2000). Susan Wallace has also carried out...

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...