2014 marked BERA’s 40th Anniversary. To celebrate 40 years of leadership in educational research we engaged our members and extended network over the course of the year to hold 28 events, across 30 Special interest groups in all 4 nations of the United Kingdom. We held the inaugural BERA annual lecture with Pasi Sahlberg presenting his analysis of how best practices and evidence-based policies have become a common mantra in educational improvement.

We published 40@40 – A portrait of 40 years of educational research through 40 studies, a collection of 40 landmark studies that have had a significant impact on educational policy, practice, research methodology and/or theory over the past 40 years.

Ongoing initiatives such as the Respecting Children and Young People project, and the BERA Observatory celebrate and promote the work of our members and demonstrate how educational research can be used to provide an evidence base for policy issues. In 2014 we also concluded the 18 month Research and Teacher Education inquiry, which explored the contribution research can make to improve the quality of teaching and published policy advice on early years, a range of new Insights, and continued to publish our four Journals.

Our 2014 annual conference was our most successful event ever with a record number of abstract submissions. 1000 delegates attended the Institute of Education in London to participate in 150 sessions and listen to exceptional presentations from our keynote lecturers including Danny Dorling, Sugata Mitra and David Leat as well as an Education Question Time.

BERA’s 40th anniversary has been an opportunity to reflect on how the association has changed over the past 40 years. As we look to 2015, BERA is committed more than ever to fostering the quality, creativity and diversity of educational research. We look forward to working with our members to develop new ways of doing this and continuing to support the range of activity we have seen this year.