Speaking the unspoken: Teaching and learning about transgender identities

In 2020, guidance published by the Department for Education stated that relationships and sex education (RSE) in England should discuss ‘LGBT content at a timely point’ (DfE, 2019, p. 15)....

Inspired by top trumps and tarot: A playful response to the teacher retention crisis

Teacher retention continues to be a significant policy problem in England, and indeed worldwide, with many countries in the Global North reporting difficulties in sustaining their teaching...

Exploring the free school meals measure in the English National Pupil Database

Pupils’ recorded eligibility for free school meals (FSM) within the English National Pupil Database (NPD) has long been utilised across the country’s research and policy communities. It is...

Parental activism in education

In her final annual report as Chief Inspector of Ofsted, England’s schools and children’s services inspectorate, Amanda Spielman, opines that the Covid-19 pandemic has ‘fractured’ the...

Generative AI in academia: Friend or foe?

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 marked a potential turning point in higher education. As a prime example of generative AI, capable of creating content and solving problems in previously...

What are educational podcasts?

Podcasts for educational purposes have received growing interest both as teaching practitioner tools and as a broadcasting medium for facilitating debate among educators (Cook, 2023). Podcast...

Philosophical discourse surrounding artificial intelligence: Extended findings of a meta-synthesis on ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

In his seminal paper in 1950, ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Alan Turing raised the question: ‘Can machines think?’. Igniting debates among both philosophers and computer...

Race, racism and hope

In August 2023, I became the inaugural recipient of the BERA Equality in Education Award in recognition of my race equity work in education. In this blog post I reflect on how race and racism have...

Using principles from cognitive science to design a school mathematics curriculum

Introduction For many years, school curriculum resources have been designed without explicit reference to research evidence and without extensive trialling in classrooms (Burkhardt & Schoenfeld,...