A real, immersive and purposeful curriculum

In a primary school context of nine academies in the West Midlands, our curriculum framework is underpinned by theories from John Dewey’s 20th-century approach to project-based learning (PBL)....

BERA Bites, issue 5: Research used or produced in schools: Which informs practitioners most?

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...

Curriculum orientations and the inclusion of immigrant parents

‘Curriculum is – or should be – at the heart of educational practice’, wrote Mark Priestley and Stavroula Philippou on BERA Blog earlier in 2019. What is taught in school, how curriculum...

Spring 2020

Decolonising the curriculum: Transnational perspectives  Research Intelligence issue 142 From the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the universities of Cape Town and (subsequently Oxford) to the...

Creativity is back on the map. But how do we navigate from here?

The Durham Commission (2019) has thankfully put creativity firmly back on the English educational map, reopening debate about its value and how we facilitate it. This is timely given the decline...

Video art as digital play for young children

In the 21st century, it seems that digital play is an inevitable experience for young children. Studies have claimed that digital devices can support children’s learning (Falloon, 2013) in...

BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant Research Reports

Here you will find the public-facing final reports from each successful BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant, detailing key findings from the research project and how these findings might be taken...

Learning from variation

BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant Research Reports

How can variation theory can be applied to the use of manipulatives to support understanding of early number? This report makes an important contribution to the existing literature on how to teach...

Local language, school and community: Curricular innovation towards closing the attainment gap

BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant Research Reports

An investigation of how schools can, by working in and with local languages and dialects, raise pupils' educational attainment, cultural awareness and self-esteem.

Playing quiz-games on their phones: A winning combination?

With increasing attention on blended and mobile learning alongside an ever-increasing attempt to measure engagement means that we are constantly looking for ways or tools to help students achieve....

Halting the rise of character education in Britain

Character education has risen up the political agenda in the UK in recent years, as it has in a number of other countries. The United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan have...

BERA Blog highlights from 2019

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A seasonal ‘yo-ho-ho’ to all our BERA Blog readers here in the UK and around the world in this, our fourth end-of-year-highlights special edition. The BB continues to grow, with more special...