Agenda for Citizenship Education (ACE)

Education and democracy & History of education: BERA Brian Simon Fund research reports

Funded by the Brian Simon fellowship grant, this research project on the topic ‘education and democracy’ focused on formulating a new ‘agenda for citizenship education’ that builds on...

Editorship of the Curriculum Journal

The opportunity BERA is looking for a team of editors to take on the editorship of the Curriculum Journal from the start of 2025. The Curriculum Journal is published by Wiley on behalf of the...

Editorial: Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

The Victorian writer, philosopher and critic, John Ruskin, once invited his readers to ‘Commiserate [with] the hapless Board School child, shut out from dreamland and poetry, and prematurely...

‘Disciplinary consciousness’ and English

What is a discipline and why does it matter? Knowing about our disciplines is more and more important given the increasingly generic demands of teaching and assessment, the proliferating ‘lethal...

Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

Evidence suggests that opportunities for students to enjoy talk, reading and writing in the subject of English are increasingly delimited in maintained secondary schools in England. The pressures...

Decline and fall? Students’ perspectives on A-level English at 16

English A-level1 is in steady decline. In England, student numbers have dropped from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 in 2023. Research involving teachers suggests that the current GCSE specifications and...

Human superpowers: Talking in class

The spoken word wields immense power. Everyday conversation is the basis of human relationships: communication underpins collaboration, the engine that facilitated the success of our species...

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better (Beckett, 1983): GCSE English students’ relationship with failure

The pressure to ‘fail better’ weighs heavy in GCSE English resit classrooms, echoing Samuel Beckett’s famous words from Worstward Ho. However, this oft-repeated mantra, stripped of its...

An ideological wolf lurking in the metaphorical sheep’s clothing? The importance of metaphor analysis in English education

In the current era of regulation and regimentation, English teachers’ sense of professionalism is constrained by their ‘policy’ identities (Ball, 2003). Their sense of subject exists within...

‘Satellite colleges’: Overseas branches of British independent schools as a growing field of research

The international school sector has seen significant growth in recent years, with the UK-based International Schools Consultancy reporting that there are 13,614 English-medium schools around the...

Boundary crossings with artists, teachers and children: Integrating creative pedagogies for young people’s wellbeing

BERA Conference 2023

Global organisations (OECD, 2018) highlight the need for renewed focus on creativity and wellbeing in education. While Wales and Scotland have innovated their curriculum to reflect a stronger...

Editorial: Doing cynefin: Exploring ideas on belonging, connectedness and community in the Curriculum for Wales

Wales is a small country that is distinctive in its landscape, culture and language. This gives the notion of place a particular resonance in Wales and reinforces the significance of local...