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...

General Election 2019: Where do the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems stand on education?

What can we expect from the three main UK political parties if elected to government? I have compared the education sections of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat manifestos. (All...

School accountability by Progress 8: A critique of Conservative and Labour proposals

The Conservatives and Labour hold different views on the future of England’s system of school accountability by Progress 8. However, both parties’ thinking is at odds with the research...

General Election 2019

Ahead of the forthcoming General Election to be held on 12th December 2019, the manifestos, or equivalent, of the parties can be found below. Conservative Party Labour Party Liberal...

Educational leadership: Post-conference reflections on an ever-changing field

As it is for many of my colleagues BERA’s Annual Conference is one of the highlights of my academic year. It’s the one conference that I try not to miss – not only to see my annual...

How technology makes us human: Cultural historical roots for design and technology education

This blog post accompanies an article by McLain, Irving-Bell, Wooff and Morrison-Love (2019), in a political climate where an ideological interpretation of knowledge (Biesta, 2014; Muller & Young,...

Mirror Mirror on the wall: the function of data in constructing child subjectivity

Data has become an increasingly important aspect of all our lives. Huge quantities of data are collected about us and used in increasingly complex ways to impact on our lives. An advertisement for...

Birmingham: A land of Trojan horses?

Birmingham has had many ethnic communities settling among its population, leading to the city becoming ‘superdiverse’ (Rex & Moore, 1967; Vertovec, 2007). British Pakistani children are close...

ITE content and the work of the content advisory group

Identifying components of initial teacher education (ITE) that all accredited ITE providers in England will have to adopt was never going to be an easy task. On the one hand, ITE providers must...

Spotlight on mental health and education: New special interest group hosts inaugural conference

Over 80 delegates attended the first conference of the recently launched Mental Health, Wellbeing and Education special interest group (SIG) at the University of West London (UWL) in July. The...

Money is not the solution to the teacher shortage – or is it?

In England, less affluent areas have had greater difficulties in attracting qualified teachers than many other parts of the country. In coastal rural areas, which can be highly deprived, 7 per...