Want to increase the take-up of STEM studies? Use carrots and flexibility, and target female students!

The need to encourage more youngsters to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is a recurrent theme in the educational policy debate, recently fuelled by environmental...

What have we learned about effectively using assessment data during remote learning over the past year?

Covid-19, education and educational research

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many teachers around the globe found themselves forced to teach in remote or online environments. This blog post explores initial findings about the assessment data...

Academic identity of early career social scientists in China: A focused ethnographic approach

I really enjoyed participating in the BERA Early Career Researcher (ECR) Network’s symposium series, which is a great platform for practitioners and researchers to get together and talk about...

Empowering marginalised parents to undertake home-schooling during Covid-19

Covid-19, education and educational research

The strains on the education system caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have forced many parents to have to contend with significant changes in their daily routines. A study of seven countries in...

Teacher agency in enacting physical education in a period of curriculum change and reform in Ireland

This blog pulls on elements of a larger study which aims to understand the enactment of curriculum policy through different curriculum policy stakeholders’ perspectives – such as curriculum...

Why we need our world history teacher to be a Martian

‘In space, race doesn’t matter, nationality doesn’t matter. In space, you see the world as a globe and you don’t see the boundaries.’ Maggie Aderin Pocock, space scientist Figure 1:...

Access denied: Education in rural India during Covid-19

Covid-19, education and educational research

The disruptive effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged social groups. When all educational institutions across India shifted to online and distance...

Education during a pandemic: Lessons from the United Arab Emirates

Covid-19, education and educational research

Even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic I was wondering, as a teacher and researcher, whether technology and digital platforms would replace teachers and traditional classrooms in the short...

Collaborative online international learning (COIL) in UK higher education: Reloaded

The concept of ‘collaborative online international learning’ (COIL) has been conceived as an educational approach that provides students from different geographical and linguacultural...

The BERA Annual Conference goes digital

The year 2020 will be remembered as one that brought many changes to both our personal and professional lives. It also gave us the opportunity to reflect on what is important to us: visits to our...

Why open educational resources are failing to widen access to education

Open educational resources (OERs) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that are freely available in the public domain. Current discussions about OERs are...

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,...