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Who wants to be an academic?

The good… Academic staff are driven by the thrill of creating new knowledge. New knowledge also stimulates the passion that academics bring to teaching their students. When these two things...

Has Athena Swan lost its way?

The Athena Swan charter was established in 2005 to advance the careers of female academics in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM). Yet it now discourages academic...

Learning to be alone: How positive solitude can benefit international students

International students experience loneliness regularly when living and studying abroad (Wawera & MacCamley, 2020), and the situation appears to have worsened during the pandemic. Since loneliness...

Covid-19 school closures, working from home and family challenges: A novel solution

Covid-19 presented a set of challenges for UK universities, and where ‘business as usual’ was expected, staff working practices intensified. The impact of this has not been equal, with the...

To EdD or not to EdD: Why is the Doctor of Education programme becoming increasingly popular among educational professionals?

The EdD has become increasingly popular as the route to a doctorate for the educational professional. When we embarked on our own EdDs some years ago there were not too many to choose from; now...

What’s in a name? The rise of the practitioner academic and time to reconsider standardised induction support

Fuelled by rapid growth in degree apprenticeships and the number of public services requiring mandatory higher education (HE) qualifications, there is a significant and ongoing rise in the number...

Education: The State of the Discipline. Systematic scoping review of the literature

A systematic scoping review of the literature on the structures & processes that influence research activities in the UK

Postgraduate research students’ experiences of the coronavirus pandemic

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has caused most postgraduate research (PGR) students to encounter research restrictions and undertake their research duties from home (see Burridge et al., 2020)....

How has Covid-19 affected how teacher educators engage their students in learning?

Education & Covid-19: BERA Small Grants Fund research reports

This report presents a mixed-methods investigation of how Covid-19 affected the ways in which teacher educators in Wales engaged their students with learning, and how the switch to online delivery...

Guests in someone else’s house? Sense of belonging among ethnic minority students in a Hong Kong university

An interest in students’ sense of belonging to their universities or colleges has been gathering momentum in research on student persistence at their chosen institution (Hausmann et al., 2007;...

BERA Early Career Researcher Network symposium: A presenter’s perspective

Being a PhD student can be a lonely business – the challenges of sustaining momentum and motivation have been well documented even in those halcyon pre-pandemic days, including in previous posts...

Academic identity of early career social scientists in China: A focused ethnographic approach

I really enjoyed participating in the BERA Early Career Researcher (ECR) Network’s symposium series, which is a great platform for practitioners and researchers to get together and talk about...