Digital masters? Reflecting on the readiness of students and staff for digital learning

Covid-19, education and educational research

If we assume that necessity really is the mother of invention, then the problems of delivery that arose when the Covid-19 virus crisis hit UK higher education represented a golden opportunity for...

Why do school exclusion rates continue to rise in England?

Children and young people excluded from school for poor behaviour have lower than average educational outcomes. They are more likely to experience ‘deep exclusion’ (Levitas et al., 2007), with...

Pay and conditions in universities: BERA’s solidarity with academics

In the 21st century, working in a university is a demanding and complex job. The expectations of academic staff are numerous. We are required to publish world-leading research outputs, and our...

Education practitioners’ and students’ perspectives on youth mental health first aid provision within education settings in England

Researching education and mental health: From ‘Where are we now?’ to ‘What next?’

The Youth Mental Health First Aid in Schools programme (Youth MHFA) is a policy initiative intended to enable education practitioners to spot the signs of mental health issues in children and...

Continuities in mental wellbeing from adolescence into early adulthood

Researching education and mental health: From ‘Where are we now?’ to ‘What next?’

We are concerned here with the extent of mental wellbeing and, in particular, distress and other difficulties with wellbeing, and whether such difficulties continue as young people move from...

Whole-school approaches to building resilience and promoting mental health: Embracing complexity

Researching education and mental health: From ‘Where are we now?’ to ‘What next?’

In the context of increasing demand for specialist mental health (MH) services, emphasis has been placed on school-based early intervention to prevent or de-escalate later MH issues. The case for...

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...

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...

Using art to represent science: A visualisation of student motivation data

Data comes in many forms, some more accessible than others. At the recent BERA conference, I tried to address this with a poster presenting quantitative data in an unexpected way. The data came...

Rescuing educational inclusion for autistic children

There’s a distinct sense of weariness surrounding the issue of educational inclusion generally, with discussions dominated by metaphors of moribundity and decomposition. While some have stated,...

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...

Total recall? The ITE content framework, research and teachers’ understandings of learning

The key teacher education policy issue at the 2019 general election is the initial teacher education (ITE) content framework for England, rushed out in the dying hours of the Conservative...