The BERA Blog: Highlights of 2020

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A warm and wintery ‘welcome’ to all our readers, wherever you may be. This time last year I wished all of you a seasonal ‘yo-ho-ho’, blissfully unaware of how 2020 would play out. Today,...

Exploring early years degrees and graduate employment outcomes

Degree-qualified practitioners contribute to the quality of early years education and improve children’s outcomes. However, little is known about the content and structure of early years...

Reading during lockdown: Supporting vulnerable learners

Covid-19, education and educational research

Learning to read is perhaps the most important thing we learn to do. There is significant evidence that being a reader impacts on future social, emotional, economic and academic success. A failure...

Supporting quiet, shy or anxious Black, Asian and minority ethnic children with English as an additional language in the early years

Education, #BlackLivesMatter and racial justice in the UK and beyond

Many articles that have been written in relation to the Black Lives Matter agenda, state that education is key to improving Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) children’s life chances...

Post Covid-19 – A ‘brave new world’?

Covid-19, education and educational research

Globally, the impact of Covid-19 has been truly unprecedented and unforeseen. In all sectors of society, in all nations, the almost immediate, total suspension of everything we know has left many...

The increasing need to educate children about their rights: An outcome of lockdown measures

Covid-19, education and educational research

Many children in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in the world, have been away from their regular school and early year settings, spending lengthy periods of time at home since the beginning of...

Children’s reflections on home education during the Covid-19 pandemic: Implications for the return to school

Covid-19, education and educational research

As school leaders plan the return to school following the global pandemic, it is crucial that their educational decisions are informed by research into the everyday realities of enforced home...

Deaf children and social wellbeing: The evolution of the special school for the deaf

Research has shown that deaf children experience disadvantage in the education system (Berry, 2017). This disadvantage is associated with a lack of tailored pedagogy, being educated in...

Activism, autonomy and identities: Stories from early childhood educators

In pre-Covid England, early childhood education and care (ECEC) was already in a state of uncertainty. A maelstrom of structural conditions and an onslaught of initiatives had manifested as...

Birth to three matters for schools: Attachment theory and readiness to learn

The role of attachment theory in education has frequently been questioned, as typified in the recent Twitter exchange on ‘edutwitter’ below. Figure 1: Anonymised screenshot of a tweet and...

Framing research: Participatory research approaches in early years education

Framing research: Theories, concepts and reflexivity in educational research

On 14 February 2020, at the BERA ECR Network Symposium, my presentation focussed on participatory research in early childhood education. Having worked for a number of years in an early childhood...

BERA joins call to cancel the introduction of Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) in the Autumn term

BERA President Dominic Wyse is one of the co-signatories to an open letter that calls upon the Government to abandon its plan to introduce the reception baseline assessment into primary schools in...