Pastoral care: a whole-school approach to creating the ethos of wellbeing that culminates in better engagement and improved academic achievement of learners

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

‘Pastoral care’ was a term once used exclusively to describe the role of shepherds caring for their sheep in the pasture in Christian religious communities, and this provides a glimpse into...

Chinglish versus China English: A need to determine ‘correct’ English among our Chinese students

Mention ‘Chinglish’ to Chinese students and they’ll probably giggle nervously. The term was coined to describe the attempts of Chinese people to use English, with the implication being that...

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...

Exploring instructors’ contributions to Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are one of the most accessible forms of education (free to join and with no enrolment limits), and so have attracted the attention of researchers for their...

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...

Evaluating the increased importance of the impact component in the UK’s research excellence framework

The research excellence framework (REF) evaluates the quality of the research produced by the higher education institutes (HEIs) in the UK in three areas: quality of research outputs, the impact...

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...

Mirror Mirror on the wall: the function of data in constructing child subjectivity

Data has become an increasingly important aspect of all our lives. Huge quantities of data are collected about us and used in increasingly complex ways to impact on our lives. An advertisement for...

Creativity in education: Encountering thing-power!

Early Monday morning by Camden Lock: A well-trodden curved canal bridge A hairy, head-nodding willow Anchoring the in-between before another week ripples in Moorings Steadfast lock...