When the object becomes the subject: Redefining the Teachers’ Standards as ‘learner standards’

In England, the Teachers' Standards are often used formatively to guide quality improvement towards a final summative, quality assurance process which takes place to ensure that the standards have...

Professionalism for those working with the under-threes: a Northern Irish perspective

Competing discourses in early childhood education and care

Northern Ireland has an established early childhood education and care (ECEC) system with some strengths, such as near-universal participation in pre-school education. However, for children under...

Tensions in scaling up effective professional development: Balancing programme integrity and school adaptation

Decades of research have sought to unpack the challenges of balancing programme integrity and school adaptation when taking educational interventions to scale. Professor emeritus Larry Cuban from...

SEND: Looking through an intersectionality lens

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

This blog post explores the concepts of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and intersectionality, and highlights the importance of having an awareness of how these are linked. I...

Editorial: Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum design and practice

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

On 24 March 2022, the British Curriculum Forum (BCF) ran the Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice online event. The event focused attention on research-informed curriculum design and...

Hopes for the future: Presentation overviews and discussions from parallel session B

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

As chair of parallel session B for the BCF Spotlight on SEND event in March 2022, it was my pleasure to introduce the speakers and to field questions from the audience. In addition to the other...

Think like a detective: The vital clue to inclusive teaching!

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

To think like a detective gives teachers both a memorable metaphor for inquiry and a compelling methodology that leads to effective inclusive teaching. Like expert detectives, expert teachers...

Teacher language: Help or hindrance to classroom learning

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

Communication between teacher and pupil is vital to pupil learning in the classroom. Usually, the focus is concentrated on the development of a pupil’s communication skills and not those of the...

What does/should inclusion even mean to the autistic learner?

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

I feel that the equity versus equality ‘debate’ (Baily & Holmarsdottir, 2015; Bird, 2018) is more than pertinent when any discussion about autistic inclusion takes place. The idea that all...

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

On 24 March 2022, the British Curriculum Forum (BCF) ran the Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice online event. The event focused attention on research-informed curriculum design and...

The National Framework for Inclusion: Supporting inclusive practices in Scotland

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

Supporting student teachers and teachers to enact inclusive approaches in Scottish schools is a significant part of the Scottish Universities Inclusion Group’s (SUIG) work. SUIG is a...

All things inclusion: Presentation overviews and discussions from parallel session A

Spotlight on SEND: Curriculum Design and Practice

As chair of parallel session A for the BCF Spotlight on SEND event in March 2022, I was delighted to welcome our speakers and share questions from our delegates.  The session began with a...