How do we truly assess success and long-term achievement in learning: exams, or innovative contextualised creative assessment?

There is a continual debate and discussion about exams – whether it is standard attainment tests (SATs) at primary school or GCSEs and A-levels at secondary – and how effective they are not...

Walking interviews: A participatory research tool with legs?

Last autumn I was lucky enough to attend one of a series of BERA Postgraduate Forum events that focussed on research methodology. It was pleasing to see that many of the postgraduates in...

Is school choice a reality for all?

We know that parents are given some choice over which school their children can attend. To this end academics, drawing on work by Bourdieu (1990), have explored the habitus and culture of both...

Educational imaginations to save the future?

At an ESRC-Palgrave-Springer Festival of Social Science event about social sciences impact, held at the Royal Society on 7 November 2017 (#FossImpact), I asked a question. Before I repeat this...

Lessons from the past: Why Winifred Mercier’s work still resonates

As teacher educators we have found ourselves sharing academic, developmental and philosophical interests and recently we have found a further shared dimension: that of the life, work and legacy of...

BERA blog highlights from 2017

BERA Blog end of year highlights

While the demise of 2017 will generate little tear-shedding amongst many of our readers, it has been another bumper year for the BERA Blog. Just over two-and-a-half years after its inception, the...

Problematising mediatised policy-making: Newspaper coverage of PISA emphasising quality and neglecting equity

We live in interesting times. We see global social media campaigns such as #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and #illRideWithYou responding to social, economic and political injustices, while on the other...

Sites of resistance: Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in school, community and the academy

Schools are institutions in which racial conflict is brought into focus and can be acute. Gillborn (2008) asserts that current education policy is not designed to eliminate race inequality, but to...

Bringing policy into being through word and code

Today’s educational policy is co-produced, through policy bureaucrat’s words and technocrat’s lines of code. The global move towards digital governance and the digitising of educational...