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The future of AI in English language teaching and learning

Artificial Intelligence in educational research and practice

Artificial intelligence (AI) can bring immediate and long-term benefits, but also challenges and risks to education systems (UNESCO, 2023). This is a hotly contested topic in English language...

Editorial: Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

The Victorian writer, philosopher and critic, John Ruskin, once invited his readers to ‘Commiserate [with] the hapless Board School child, shut out from dreamland and poetry, and prematurely...

Exploring issues in secondary subject English: Reconnecting curriculum, policy and practice

Evidence suggests that opportunities for students to enjoy talk, reading and writing in the subject of English are increasingly delimited in maintained secondary schools in England. The pressures...

‘Disciplinary consciousness’ and English

What is a discipline and why does it matter? Knowing about our disciplines is more and more important given the increasingly generic demands of teaching and assessment, the proliferating ‘lethal...

An ideological wolf lurking in the metaphorical sheep’s clothing? The importance of metaphor analysis in English education

In the current era of regulation and regimentation, English teachers’ sense of professionalism is constrained by their ‘policy’ identities (Ball, 2003). Their sense of subject exists within...

Decline and fall? Students’ perspectives on A-level English at 16

English A-level1 is in steady decline. In England, student numbers have dropped from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 in 2023. Research involving teachers suggests that the current GCSE specifications and...

Human superpowers: Talking in class

The spoken word wields immense power. Everyday conversation is the basis of human relationships: communication underpins collaboration, the engine that facilitated the success of our species...

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better (Beckett, 1983): GCSE English students’ relationship with failure

The pressure to ‘fail better’ weighs heavy in GCSE English resit classrooms, echoing Samuel Beckett’s famous words from Worstward Ho. However, this oft-repeated mantra, stripped of its...

Initial teacher training for GCSE English resit teachers in the further education sector in England: A responsive reform

Following changes to government policy, the picture of English in the further education and skills (FES) sector has changed dramatically over the past decade. Not only are all students now...

English in Multi Academy Trusts: the changing shape of the subject and its impact on teachers

In light of the DfE’s concern for teacher workload, seen through the Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders report, the government’s stated objective of making all schools academies by 2030,...

English in Multi Academy Trusts: the changing shape of the subject and its impact on teachers

In light of the DfE’s concern for teacher workload, seen through the Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders report, the government’s stated objective of making all schools academies by 2030,...

Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research, fifth edition (2024)

The fifth edition of BERA’s Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research has been revised and updated to enable researchers to conduct their work to the highest ethical standards in any and all...