What can experiment tell us in educational research?

In education, we’ve put a straitjacket around our notion of experiment. We adhere steadfastly to what Parlett and Hamilton (1972) famously called the ‘agricultural-botany paradigm’. But the...

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...

Positioning children with a vision impairment as knowledge producers and change agents

‘The ability to collaborate on both a small- and large-scale is becoming one of the core requisites of postmodern society’ (Fullan, 1993, p.5). Yet it is ‘still relatively rare for children...

Storying identities, experiences and agency of graduate teaching assistants

‘Have you thought about including recordings of these stories as part of your thesis? It’s just that reading them out loud was really powerful for those of us listening.’ I stopped. To be...

BERA ECR Network symposium: A personal reflection on constructive feedback

In October 2019 I travelled to the US to explore the benefits of oracy-centred teaching strategies and expeditionary learning for the development of the speaking, listening, reading and writing...

Framing research: Participatory research approaches in early years education

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...

Adapting to the new normal in survey research

Covid-19 has greatly impacted ongoing projects by causing disruption to the research process and delays in data collection, and in some cases research funding has been reduced or withdrawn to...

Relationality as a way of rethinking makerspace research methodologies

In our recent article in the British Journal of Educational Technology, ‘Intra‐active entanglements: What posthuman and new materialist frameworks can offer the learning sciences’, we expand...

Ethics-in-practice in fragile contexts: The value of the CERD ethical appraisal framework

Educational research in fragile contexts At a time when unprecedented numbers of people across the world are experiencing forced migration, there is an urgent and critical imperative to develop...

Exploring the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s capital(s) in survey research: Student participation in further education in England

Following engagement with Savage et al’s (2013) Great British Class Survey (GBCS), and subsequent criticisms of it – for instance, the selectivity of indicators of each capital (Bradley, 2014)...

Researching the world in uncertain times: The role of bricolage

Covid-19, education and educational research

‘Man finds himself living in an aleatory world; his existence involves, to put it baldly, a gamble. The world is a scene of risk; it is uncertain, unstable, uncannily unstable.’ (Dewey, 1929,...

The 10 books that made me a sociologist of education

Over a period of 45 years working in higher education I have accumulated a lot of books. I am now sorting through that accumulation and trying to decide which I will keep and which I will pass on...