News
What’s happening in July
Please find an overview of some of our upcoming activities in July.
Creativity as spaces of resistance & Anna Craft Memorial Lecture – 1 Jul 2022 10:30 am – 6:30 pm
As we emerge from a period of dominantly virtual events, this in person event aims to inspire and provoke conversations and action between delegates. Developed in response to previous SIG events and particularly to our 2021 provocation document ‘Creativity in 21st century education; where how and what next?’, the event focuses on key areas identified as ones where we ‘could do better’:
BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant – Deadline
9 July 2022
The BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant is intended to support research led by schools and colleges’ with a focus on curriculum inquiry and investigation. Normally, the grant is worth up to £5,000 for the winner, with £3,500 for two other grants, for a total of £12,000. This prize, awarded annually, acknowledges the importance of research led by schools and colleges, and the last set of grants was awarded in 2021.
Submissions for the grant must be on:
Developing a curriculum for climate and sustainability education.
We would expect the grant work to be carried out in the 2022/23 academic year, beginning September 2022 with the final report being submitted by September 2023.
The BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant is for applicants who are based within schools and colleges.
While it is possible that the applications will include collaborative partnerships with HE institutions we are keen to support schools and colleges led research and therefore ask the primary applicant to be based in a school or college.
Ethnicity and the Early Years Workforce in Maintained Nursery Schools across England – 12 Jul 2022
In this webinar, we will present findings from the BERA-funded project ‘Ethnicity and the Early Years Workforce: A Census of Maintained Nursery Schools in England’. The project has examined how staff ethnicity reflects (or not) the children served by nursery schools, as well as how staff ethnicity intersects with qualification levels and leadership responsibilities.
The quantitative data will be elucidated through the qualitative research of Shaddai Tembo, which emphasises the need to make Black educator identity more visible in early years education. Looking at the experiences of Black Early Years educators through the lens of critical race theory highlights how ethnicity is a key aspect of lived experiences of working in the sector, and the continued silencing of dialogues about race and ethnicity in Early Years.
BERA Governance Opportunities
We will be opening calls for applications to two key roles in the Association in Autumn 2022, the BERA President and the BERA Treasurer.
At this time we also have an opportunity for members to join the Risk Assessment & Audit Committee (RAAC).
Everyone’s Invited?: becoming response-able in addressing sexual harassment in primary, secondary and special schools – 18 Jul 2022
The first parliamentary inquiry report into sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was launched in late 2016 by the Women and Equalities Committee. It included more than 70 submissions with a suite of 12 recommendations. Fast forward 5 years (post #metoo) and Sara Soma’s Everyone’s Invited (2021) social movement gathers over 50,000 testimonies, rousing further governmental responses and inquiries (this time by Ofsted 2020 and Estyn 2021).
With a growing number of children and young people speaking out, or being supported to speak out about their experience, this event asks some searching questions
- What is the role of research and research data amidst the rise of a viral and vociferous call-out culture?
- Who is responsible and able to respond to what is surfacing? Is everyone invited into the space of response-ability and preventative change? Who is included and excluded and how?
- What concepts are being used by academics, policy makers and others to define and respond to what is a complex intersectional, socio-structural, cultural, affective, and technologically mediated phenomenon (e.g. harassment; cyber-flashing; abuse; bullying etc)
- What might a collective and collaborative praxis for change and transformation look like for educational researchers working in the field of gender and sexual violence?
Join us to engage with these questions and more at our annual Sexualities and Gender SIG online webinar this July. We bring together a wide range of feminist and queer scholar-activists in the field of critical gender and sexuality education studies, whose research and engagement in primary, secondary and special schools is interacting directly with policy and practice.
A number of BERA Special Interest Groups are currently recruiting for new SIG Convenors.
As a SIG convenor you receive a number of benefits, support from the BERA office and are invited to attend convenor meetings in London, with all other SIG convenors.
SIG Convenors are volunteers whose main role is to co-ordinate, oversee and develop the mission and activities of each particular SIG. The SIG is there to represent the views of their members, not of individual convenors.
By agreeing to assume a position of SIG convenor, individuals are committing to fulfilling the responsibilities and obligations that go with that role.
The annual responsibilities for SIG Convenors can be found in this document.