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What is the purpose of school and who should control it?

We all learned at school Churchill’s comment that ‘democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’ (quoted in Langworth,...

Call for papers: Decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in the UK

A special issue of the Curriculum Journal

Why Wales has a head start in the future of post-16 education in the UK and internationally

Wales is currently in the middle of a curriculum and qualifications reform. Since 2015, ‘pioneer’ schools across the principality have been contributing to the development of a new national...

Relative age and the early years foundation stage profile

Who is attributed a ‘good level of development’ – and what might this tell us about how ‘good’ the EYFSP is?

Playful creativity

‘Intelligence is what you use when you don’t know what to do.’ (Attributed to Jean Piaget) Learning is often compromised by competitiveness (Brown & Vaughan, 2009). Bred from the...

Playful interventions: Measuring impact on learning

Figure 1: PMM tracking individuals’ understanding of ‘playfulness and me’ over the course of several workshops and a field trip. Red text was added before any workshops were...

Does playfulness have a place in higher education? A reflection on using playfulness when teaching research methods to postgraduate students

Playfulness has been defined as a disposition (Barnett, 1991) a mindset (Skilbeck, 2017) and fundamental for creativity (Cheng-Ping Chang, 2013). I have spent many years working in play and...

Playful praxis: A student’s perspective

Now in my fifth year of higher education (HE), I am in the unfortunate position to have more years as an undergraduate to reflect on than most, yet still have more to look forward to. Yes, I am a...

Connection and creativity despite Covid-19: Playful learning at university during the pandemic

Over the past decade, interest in play and playful learning in higher education (HE) has grown significantly (James & Brookfield, 2014; James & Nerantzi, 2019). Publications, conferences and...

Editorial: The playful academic

Imagine a place of learning where progressive failing, building resilience, and developing individual and collective skills, values and creativity are not only thought about as a theoretical...

The playful academic

This special BERA Blog series, edited by Maarten Koeners, explores how play and playfulness can facilitate learning in higher education – from the points of view of educator, researcher,...

Sharing the ambition: Play and parental interest in Scottish early years education

BCF Curriculum Investigation Grant Research Reports

This report provides evidence from the Sharing the Ambition project, which investigates parents' perceptions of early years education in Scotland, what their priorities are in terms of settings'...