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Critically Examining the Emergence of Teach First

In the latest issue of the British Educational Research Journal, Allen and Allnutt (2017) assess, using longitudinal data, the impact of Teach First teachers on secondary pupils’ outcomes. ...

School subjects – a missing piece in research on school governance?

In a recent study (Prytz 2017), I show that a standard narrative about Swedish school governance in the 20th century does not fit how the school subject mathematics (years 1–9) was governed in...

Hyper-governance and datafication in early years education: children as ‘abilities-machines’ or ‘like sausages in a factory’

The growing use of data in education has both been lauded as a revolution and criticized as detrimental to teachers and children; no wonder then that it is increasingly a focus for educational...

Some Thoughts on the Popularity and Value of Educational Research

In view of the current popularity of educational research, it's easy to forget that this field of study has only gained academic approval relatively recently. In 1982 I  tried to register with...

The Parlous State of Educational Research

When Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, claimed during the recent presidential election campaign that his predecessor, President Barack Obama, ‘is the founder’ of...

Professional Learning for Teacher Leadership

Teacher leadership is a term which is increasingly being used in Scottish educational policy and the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) has been tasked with supporting the...

Leadership in Early Childhood: Is it just for those working at the very top?

This blog explores some of the key findings from the book ‘Leading in Early Childhood’, by Geraldine Davis, Anglia Ruskin University and Gemma Ryder, University of East London. Our research...

Educational leadership: what are the current issues and how should they be studied?

2016 is a great time to review the state of educational leadership research and reflect on firstly, what are the key contemporary issues and secondly, how best to research them. Educational...

Beyond the school gates: reciprocal academic leadership

One of the features of the school improvement landscape over the past two decades has been a focus on developing school leadership and how this leadership is used to empower teachers in the quest...

Developing a cohesive strategy for leading learning inside education?

I read Ian Potter’s blog post ‘Can we learn together?’ with interest having spoken to him at Belmas back in the Summer, on some of these issues. As a secondary school teacher who has worked...

Can we learn together?

I wrote this whilst at BERA conference in Belfast and pondered the extent to which we can deepen the links between the school system and HEIs in England. From a school leader perspective I see a...

Teacher agency: What is it and why does it matter?

Highlights from the first 1,000 BERA Blog posts

The concept of ‘teacher agency’ has elicited a fair amount of attention recently, including a special edition of Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice. And yet, it remains an elusive...