‘To fit in at school, you have to be a robot’: Do care farms offer a viable alternative?

In a recent and yet-to-be-published qualitative study, I explored the possible contribution of care farming (the therapeutic use of farming practices) to young people’s engagement with learning....

A moment to breathe: How reflection can reduce teacher maths anxiety

This post explores the need for professional learning development to reduce teacher maths anxiety, and follows up on a recent blog post about reducing pupil maths anxiety. Worldwide demand for...

New series of the BERA podcast

This autumn we have launched a new series of the BERA podcast. Over the next few weeks we will continue to feature emerging research which connects to policy and practice.  Already we have...

How can we teach for transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies in a high autonomy curriculum?

New Zealand’s 2007 curriculum reform has received international attention for its high level of curricular autonomy, learner-centred ideologies and adoption of 21st-century skills, competencies...

Is it still worth calculating Progress 8?

Education systems around the world increasingly monitor school performance and hold schools to account using student data from high-stakes examinations (OECD, 2008; NFER, 2018). England has been...

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

This series celebrates our one-thousandth BERA Blog post by republishing some of our favourites from among the posts that have proven most popular since the blog began in 2015. The collection both...

BERA Blog post #1,000

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

It hardly seems possible, six years after its creation of the BERA Blog, that this is its one-thousandth post. The brainchild of BERA CEO Nick Johnson, in 2015 the BB set out to provide...

Supporting teachers who have trained during the pandemic to thrive in their first year of teaching: A guide for secondary schools

Covid-19, education and educational research

Everyone who has worked in schools and in initial teacher education (ITE) will remember 2020–21 as one of significant disruption and challenge, and none more so than those whose professional...

Considering teacher wellbeing and commitment to teaching in the event of a ‘firebreak’ lockdown this autumn

Covid-19, education and educational research

There are reports that an October lockdown might be used as a ‘firebreak’ if cases of the Covid-19 virus rise too high with the return of schools and universities (Mason & Davis, 2021). As...

BERA funds over £40,000 of research on race and ethnicity

We are delighted to announce new funding looking at aspects of race and ethnicity across the education sector. There are five recipients of the new round of small grant funding: Melissa Jogie...

Towards a more equitable and empowering mathematics curriculum: What if we made progressive pedagogies more visible?

The Covid-19 pandemic has added to growing concerns about how misleading statistics and media reports can influence the beliefs and behaviour of millions of people. The Organisation for Economic...

A matter of inclusion: Schools continue to navigate government advice in support of students

Covid-19, education and educational research

As the school year in England begins once again against an evolving Covid-19 backdrop, we ask what this latest set of circumstances means for issues of inclusion, including which students will...