The problems with resilience thinking

Covid-19, education and educational research

The 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...

Want to increase the take-up of STEM studies? Use carrots and flexibility, and target female students!

The need to encourage more youngsters to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a recurrent theme in the educational policy debate, recently fuelled by environmental...

We need an evidence-based expert approach to the post-pandemic recovery of young people

Covid-19, education and educational research

In 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...

The impact of school closures on pupils with English as an additional language

Covid-19, education and educational research

Pupils 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...

Teacher agency in enacting physical education in a period of curriculum change and reform in Ireland

This blog pulls on elements of a larger study which aims to understand the enactment of curriculum policy through different curriculum policy stakeholders’ perspectives – such as curriculum...

Curriculum making as relational practice: A qualitative ego-network approach

Teacher networks have been identified as an essential element for the improvement of education reforms and consequently have attracted increased interest from educational researchers (Daly,...

A curriculum for wellbeing: Improving all aspects of wellbeing in curricula & schools

How should the wellbeing of both pupils and staff be integrated into curriculum development? This collection, edited by Victoria Pugh, presents answers to this question from a diverse range of...

Misled by short-term performance in lessons: Applying the science of memory in the classroom

Successful learning depends upon the functioning of human long-term memory (LTM) – a set of psychological processes that allow us to retain skills and knowledge over the long term, and which...

Call for papers: ‘Challenging curricular hegemony through international perspectives’

A special issue of the Curriculum Journal

‘The significant return to normality’: Back to school in England, but who is missing?

Covid-19, education and educational research

As 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...

Children’s agency: What is it, and what should be done?

'Oh my God. The Principal came in today and chose a child to read. I knew what I had to do: I knew I had to remind the child to say "p. 35 chapter 4"; I had to remind the child to hold the book in...

What ‘building back better’ really means for our children: Anne Longfield’s final speech as the children’s commissioner for England

Covid-19, education and educational research

On 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...