In 1974 the first BERA conference took place from 11am Friday until 3pm on Saturday, in Birmingham, with John Nisbet giving the inaugural address entitled ‘Educational research; the state of the art’. There were three parallel sessions on the Friday afternoon discussing the politics and finance, methodology and audience for educational research, with two more (called seminars) on Saturday morning looking at classroom studies and evaluation.

In 2014 the 40th BERA conference will be held at the Institute of Education in London. There will be no presidential address this year but Sugata Mitra and David Leat, and Danny Dorling will be our keynote speakers. John Nisbet’s address reflected on the increasing amount of money being invested in educational research and the need for a BERA to co-ordinate an increasingly wide range of interests. Times may have changed but BERA conference has grown to be the forum for the exchange of ideas. There will be approximately 150 sessions representing 29 special interest groups. I hope your paper will be in one of those sessions and you will be an active contributor to our 40th Anniversary Question Time when we reflect back in order to look forward to the next 40 years in educational research.

Felicity Wikeley
Chair of the Conference Committee
felicity.wikeley@canterbury.ac.uk