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Aspirations, expectations and rethinking outreach

‘Aspirations’ are a wonderfully simple concept. The problem is that it’s becoming increasingly clear they are of little worth in terms of understanding pathways towards higher education, as...

Arresting ‘epistemic violence’: Decolonising the national curriculum for history

A renewed call to ‘decolonise’ the curriculum has marked a shift in thinking about education and what should form the canon of curriculum content (le Grange, 2016). It has been amplified...

Longitudinal qualitative research to look at what works for children with conduct disorders

I was interviewing a teacher in a school for excluded pupils who had been providing one-to-one teaching to a child in a longitudinal study I was conducting. We were talking about the very...

Young children’s perceptions of due process in schools’ disciplinary procedures

‘It’s not fair!’ is a common phrase heard in schools. But what is ‘fair’ in the eyes of pupils? Our recently published study in the British Educational Research Journal explored how...

BERA Bites: A resource for teachers, lecturers and students from the BERA Blog

The BERA Blog editors are pleased to announce the launch of a new series of publications: BERA Bites, edited collections of selected articles on key topics in education published on the BERA Blog....

Investigating classroom contexts for learning for pupils with special educational needs: Class size, groupings and interactions

Many countries follow policies of inclusion in which pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are, as far as possible, educated in mainstream settings. For the most part this...

Elite universities, fields of study and top salaries: Which degree will make you rich?

As more people gain university degrees, people are increasingly aware that some degrees may be worth more than others. We know that the British socioeconomic elite is dominated by people who have...

Students experience empowerment and empathy through pedagogical partnership

Student empowerment can take many forms. Some, such as new student activism and student consumerism, can feel threatening to faculty and higher education communities. Others offer a...

Closing the gap in access to free ‘universal’ early education: What affects participation among low-income families?

For over a decade, all children in England have been entitled to free government-funded early education and care from the term after they turn three. One of the aims of this policy is to close the...

Researching the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with young onset dementia

As the leading cause of death in England and Wales (ONS 2017), dementia touches many families and, even if they don’t have a relative with the condition, most people at least know of someone who...

Globalisation and individualism: Implications for the inclusion agenda

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

It is known that, over recent decades, societies around the world have witnessed drastic transformations that have affected various facets of people’s lives. These changes have created...

The power of literature: Why literature teaching is about emancipation and social justice

This blog considers something that we all share – memories of reading literature – but its purpose is to promote and defend the place of egalitarian approaches to literature teaching in...