What is the purpose of school and who should control it?

We all learned at school Churchill’s comment that ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’ (quoted in Langworth,...

Why Wales has a head start in the future of post-16 education in the UK and internationally

Wales is currently in the middle of a curriculum and qualifications reform. Since 2015, ‘pioneer’ schools across the principality have been contributing to the development of a new national...

Editorial: The playful academic

The playful academic

Imagine a place of learning where progressive failing, building resilience, and developing individual and collective skills, values and creativity are not only thought about as a theoretical...

Playful creativity

The playful academic

‘Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do.’ (Attributed to Jean Piaget) Learning is often compromised by competitiveness (Brown & Vaughan, 2009). Bred from the...

Playful interventions: Measuring impact on learning

The playful academic

Figure 1: PMM tracking individuals’ understanding of ‘playfulness and me’ over the course of several workshops and a field trip. Red text was added before any workshops were...

Connection and creativity despite Covid-19: Playful learning at university during the pandemic

The playful academic

Over the past decade, interest in play and playful learning in higher education (HE) has grown significantly (James & Brookfield, 2014; James & Nerantzi, 2019). Publications, conferences and...

Does playfulness have a place in higher education? A reflection on using playfulness when teaching research methods to postgraduate students

The playful academic

Playfulness has been defined as a disposition (Barnett, 1991) a mindset (Skilbeck, 2017) and fundamental for creativity (Cheng-Ping Chang, 2013). I have spent many years working in play and...

Playful praxis: A student’s perspective

The playful academic

Now in my fifth year of higher education (HE), I am in the unfortunate position to have more years as an undergraduate to reflect on than most, yet still have more to look forward to. Yes, I am a...

Music teachers are curriculum designers

It is fair to say that the model music curriculum has caused quite a stir in music classrooms in England. A national curriculum already exists for music, and while it is only statutory for around...

Call for papers: Decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in the UK

A special issue of the Curriculum Journal

New series of the BERA podcast

This autumn we have launched a new series of the BERA podcast. Over the next few weeks we will continue to feature emerging research which connects to policy and practice.  Already we have...

How can we teach for transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies in a high autonomy curriculum?

New Zealand’s 2007 curriculum reform has received international attention for its high level of curricular autonomy, learner-centred ideologies and adoption of 21st-century skills, competencies...