Halting the rise of character education in Britain

Character education has risen up the political agenda in the UK in recent years, as it has in a number of other countries. The United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan have...

Natural language processing: A tool for microgenetic analysis

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

Microgenetic analysis is a Vygotskyan educational research method that supports uncovering student sense-making activity during collaborative learning. Investigating learning using microgenetic...

Aesthetic education: Recent thoughts on old problems

Aesthetic education is usually concerned with the role of arts appreciation in students’ personal development. Its advocates often pitch it in opposition to instrumentalism, but in doing so,...

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...

SEND Crisis: A call to arms against austerity

The House of Commons Education Select Committee recently published the findings from their inquiry into special educational needs and disability (SEND). The report describes a serious failure in...

Multi-academy trusts in England: What drives them to grow?

Multi-academy trusts (MATs) are now a common feature of the English educational landscape. Yet numerous high-profile failures indicate that they present a substantial challenge in terms of...

Threshold concepts and troublesome transitions

I attended school in the county of Staffordshire, England, and can still clearly recall starting Sixth Form as being one of the most significant periods in my life. Transitioning from the General...

Wellbeing by acronym: Simplifying the complex?

Among the few shared understandings of the concept of wellbeing are that it is complex, multidimensional and eludes easy definition and measurement. As research and policy attention have gathered...

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...

Escape from the Skinner box

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is very much in the public eye, the issue of its use in education has attracted much attention, both good and bad. Within the context of education, one...

The ethics of using pedagogical agents in intelligent tutoring systems

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

Recognising that learning is a social activity, intelligent tutoring systems enable learners to engage in (virtual) face-to-face social interactions with autonomous animated software characters,...