Search

It’s time to place our students first, by putting feedback first

You’re at work late on a Friday night. The clock reads 9:58pm, and you’ve just finished providing feedback for the very last of your students’ essays. In the corner of your office, you spot...

Between a hard place and a hard place: A study of ethical dilemmas experienced by student teachers while on practicum

Drawing attention to the types of ethical challenges faced by experienced teachers has been an internationally common teaching approach in pre-service teacher education when exploring the ethical...

Having a secure and safe place to conduct the fieldwork: Further anecdotal tales in pursuit of the elusive doctorate

In this blog we consider the more logistical aspects of completing a PhD – namely, ensuring that you have a secure and safe place in which to conduct the fieldwork. We both feel strongly about...

The Future of Educational Research in Wales

This report, published by BERA in partnership with the Welsh Government, presents the proceedings of and lessons from the Future of Educational Research in Wales conference. Held in Cardiff on 14...

Peering through the looking glass: Making sense of the observation process in HE

This blog is inspired by two recent experiences. The first was attending Matt O’Leary’s recent seminar at Liverpool John Moores’ University on ‘Observing teaching and learning in higher...

Curriculum development through professional enquiry: Developments in Wales

Since the publication of Graham Donaldson’s report in 2015 (Donaldson, 2015) and the adoption of its recommendations by the Welsh Government, pioneer schools across Wales have been taking the...

Having a handle on time, sacrifice and resilience: Further anecdotal tales in pursuit of the elusive doctorate

In this blog, we consider the more practical aspects of completing a PhD – namely time, sacrifice and resilience. Having a ‘handle on time’ is a very important aspect of the PhD journey. We...

BERA Blog highlights from 2018

BERA Blog end of year highlights

A seasonal welcome to all our BERA Blog readers in the UK and around the world in this, our third end-of-year-highlights special edition. And what a year this has turned out to be. (I really will...

Researchers drawing on teachers’ tools: Picturebooks with migrant learners

This blog post springs from a symposium I convened at BERA Conference 2018 entitled ‘Using creative methods to explore complex topics with young participants’. The symposium reflected my...

The neglect of practice

Many BERA members will be very familiar with terms such as evidence-informed practice, evidence-based practice and research-engaged teaching. The recent BERA close-to-practice research project is...

Am I actually teaching historical thinking and reasoning?

Many teachers find it difficult to operationalise ideas from the literature and envisage ‘what it looks like in the classroom’. Teaching historical thinking and reasoning (HTR) is a good...

Action research in the classroom: Applying spacing and retrieval practice

I have been a classroom teacher for nearly two decades, but have only recently undertaken action research. In this post I describe my experiences with spacing (Bjork & Bjork, 2014; Cepeda et al,...