Category: Research
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Why schools need to address anti-LGBT bullying
This week marks Anti-Bullying Week, and our SIoE research shows that lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) young people are still at risk of being bullied in our schools. Our study is the largest of its kind ever conducted in England, with over 61,000 pupils and staff from 853 schools taking part. It focused specifically…
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The 2022 SEND review: asked but not heard
Asking without listening When the government launched the SEND review in 2022, it promised to “restore families’ trust and confidence in an inclusive education system.” Yet for many families of disabled young people, it felt like déjà vu, another consultation that asked for their views but did not seem prepared to hear them. Our Right…
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Finding meaning in meaning
A recent visit to an exhibition of ice-age art in Keighley, part of the Bradford City of Culture events, alerted me to the surprising links, but also the obvious differences, between the study of our deepest pre-history and contemporary educational research. The exhibition was a display, collected from all over Europe, of small, ‘mobile’ pieces…
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Why climate change must be in the new national curriculum
In July 2024, the new Labour government announced a review of the national curriculum. Two of its stated aims are to ‘ensure children and young people leave compulsory education ready for life and ready for work’, and to ‘reflect the issues … of our society.’ If the review is to succeed in these aims, it…
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Flexible working in teaching: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander
‘ Teacher supply in England remains in a perilous state.’ (NFER, 2023) Whilst effective flexible working in schools has traditionally been a part-time working pattern associated with women teachers with caring responsibilities, this can be stigmatising. But, new legislation means a request to work flexibly is now an option for all, and from the first…
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Learning through outdoor adventure today helps young people adapt to the challenges of tomorrow
Within a world which currently resembles a moving target, an enormous amount of unmitigated information is at young people’s fingertips. Consequently, the measure of their knowledge is not the amount of this information which can be retained (cognitive skills). Rather, it is their ability to curate (filter and process) material coupled with an understanding of…
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Minimising harm in research with multilingual parents – protecting participants through creating translanguaging space
Research ethics in higher education institutions are increasingly led by the mantra: protect the institution, protect the participants, protect yourself. Mostly this is quality assured through increasingly bureaucratic processes involving form filling and standardised risk assessments. As ethics representative for SIOE this has caused me many sleepless nights thinking about whether the multiple ethics forms…
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Speaking volumes and silent echoes: uncovering government priorities for disabled young people in the SEND review
“Language exerts hidden power like the moon on the tides.” Rita Mae Brown (2011) In a recent paper from the Right to Review project, we analysed the SEND Review (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities), a Green Paper that set out the government’s proposed reforms for the SEND system. Our aim was to interrogate “the hidden…
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Writing on writing: five suggestions for challenging your writing practices
In this post I reflect on strategies that help me write. Of course, I still get stuck, distracted or temporarily disheartened, feeling that whatever I write is inadequate. But writing captures, however clumsily, an expression of an idea, an argument, a position, at a moment in time. And it can always be revised. As I…
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Writing the doctorate
Writing the doctorate is hard. I am reminded of this of late, as four of my doctoral students are in the mythical writing up stage. I say ‘mythical’ because we all know that students don’t just ‘write up’ once the data analysis is done and dusted. My students have been writing continuously over the course…