School accountability by Progress 8: A critique of Conservative and Labour proposals

The Conservatives and Labour hold different views on the future of England’s system of school accountability by Progress 8. However, both parties’ thinking is at odds with the research...

‘Me, my selfie and I’: An exploration of children’s perceptions of social media – a PhD pilot study

Numbers of users of social media has increased dramatically in recent years with children and young people recognised as heavy adopters of this virtual social network (Richards, Caldwell, & Go,...

How technology makes us human: Cultural historical roots for design and technology education

This blog post accompanies an article by McLain, Irving-Bell, Wooff and Morrison-Love (2019), in a political climate where an ideological interpretation of knowledge (Biesta, 2014; Muller & Young,...

School readiness, early years education and neoliberal subjectivities

This symposium built upon BERA’s research commission, Competing Discourses of Early Childhood Education and Care, and critically explored why and how early childhood education and care (ECEC)...

Threshold concepts and troublesome transitions

I attended school in the county of Staffordshire, England, and can still clearly recall starting Sixth Form as being one of the most significant periods in my life. Transitioning from the General...

Join the Curriculum Journal editorial board

The Curriculum Journal – BERA’s international peer-reviewed journal featuring original contributions to the study of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment – is refreshing the membership of its...

Decoding computer models to advance mechanistic reasoning

Using models to understand how and why a natural phenomenon emerges is a fundamental practice in the sciences. Analysing the underlying components and interactions that generate a phenomenon is...

Escape from the Skinner box

Artificial Intelligence in educational research and practice

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is very much in the public eye, the issue of its use in education has attracted much attention, both good and bad. Within the context of education, one...

How research can inform teachers and teaching in schools

Despite renewed efforts in many countries to align educational practice more closely with findings from educational research, there is little clarity about how teachers can, in principle, use...

Yes, they can! Teachers and learners as language curriculum developers

In contexts in which English as a foreign language is a mandatory subject in secondary education, language learning motivation can be a challenge for teachers and ministerial curriculum...

The use of technology in education and its potential to heal liberated Iraq

While information and communication technology (ICT) has been integrated into education for the last three decades in many parts of the world, this has not been the case in Iraq. ICT was...

Towards ‘slow pedagogy’: Revaluing the reading seminar for professional development

How ‘old school’ can it get? A text on the table and a small group of people around it. All have read the text, and gather to discuss it together. That’s the setting of a reading seminar....