The complexity of the relations between policy, research and practice in primary education

What are we educating for?

I would like to believe that our national policymakers for primary school education seek out the relationship between policy, research and practice. I’d like to think that to achieve this they...

Reflective thinking through scrapbook journalling: From the constrained to the chaotic

Educators are well versed in reflective practice when it comes to pedagogy but less so when it comes to documenting research (Moon, 1999). Kelly proposes that the journal can be ‘an anchor,...

Designing more robust experiments to improve education research

Meta-analyses can play an important role in educational research. Aggregating results from different, but comparable studies, to demonstrate average effect sizes can be highly informative....

‘Doing time’: Issues for qualitative research when dealing with data related to time

Why is data related to time important for education research? Considering ‘time’ is a crucial issue for researchers of education because development and change are fundamental to understand...

Generating research income versus REF results: What is the relationship?

On 12 May 2022, the results of the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021) were released. Generally known as ‘the REF’, this framework exists to assess and hold...

Positionality and practitioner research: Schoolteachers’ experiences of professional doctorates in education

Introduction The growth, internationally, in professional doctorates over the past 25 years has been well documented, as are the forms, fields and disciplines that such doctorates embrace....

L2 proficiency, age of L2 acquisition, and working memory: Evidence from Mandarin–English bilingual students

Working memory (WM) is a limited-capacity mechanism that temporarily stores information in the mind and manipulates it when it is no longer perceptually present (Cowan, 2008). WM abilities have...

Maybe they should all be cats? Designing a persuasive game for teacher recruitment

The teaching workforce is looking increasingly unsettled, in a time when schools and students most need stability. The exigent nature of STEM teacher recruitment in England is hard to miss, with...

The potential of infrapolitical dissent for influencing climate change education policy

As academics working to ameliorate the impacts of climate change and environmental destruction through education, we often question the efficacy of our efforts. As higher education teachers, we...

Introducing the #baglady methodology

Finding friends as an adult is really difficult. As a child it’s easy to approach someone, state your name, and ask if they want to play: sorted. As an adult such an approach might be frowned...

Can developing peer mentoring relationships improve teaching development in higher education?

Teaching excellence has been at the forefront of policy worldwide (O’Leary & Savage, 2020). In the UK, the Teaching Excellence Framework, ranking tables and scrutiny from the Office for...

BERA announces 2023 BERA Educational Research Book of the Year Shortlist

The BERA Educational Research Book of the Year award celebrates the publication of educational research and is awarded to a scholarly book on education deemed to be high quality, engaging and...