Education in a Changing World – reflections from the 2024 BERA/WERA Conference

By Nerys Defis, OU Curriculum Tutor, September 2024

Timetable organisers are worth their weight in gold and for those of us who attended the 2024 BERA-WERA conference the timetablers should really be held in awe. A conference running over five days, with over 470 sessions, and over 2,000 delegates in attendance from all across the globe. No mean timetabling feat!

BERA, or the British Educational Research Association, was celebrating it’s 50^th anniversary at this year’s conference, held at the University of Manchester from 8 - 12^th September. By collaborating with WERA (the World Education Research Association), the organisers managed to convene a truly international conference to showcase a wide-range of innovative and established educational research.

As one of this year’s BERA Conference delegates and presenters, it was sometimes difficult to pick and choose from the vast menu of available sessions. I therefore decided to follow three main themes as a form of selection criteria.

Firstly, as a Curriculum Tutor with the OU in Wales’s PGCE programme, I looked for sessions linked to Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Listening to presentations from various countries including Ghana, Kuwait and England, underlined my understanding of the unique position we have in Wales in terms of our co-created curriculum and our collaborative ITE model. Presenters from Wales were able to showcase our purpose-led curriculum and model of ITE, giving Welsh educational reform the international attention it deserves according to Anna Bryant (Cardiff MET) and Trevor Mutton (University of Oxford).

The second theme I followed within the conference was well-being, particularly as this links to my own research interests on how families perceive children’s use of digital media may affect their wellbeing. Sessions on well-being focussed on both pupil, staff and student-teacher well-being. Whilst the discussions on barriers and challenges often differed; interestingly, messaging around the importance of listening and considering holistic well-being applied to all.

Thirdly, I followed sessions that were linked to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). This was a key theme within the conference and one of the week’s keynote presentations by Prof. Tim Soutphommmasane, the University of Oxford’s Chief Diversity Officer, considered ways to strengthen EDI. Some difficult topics were covered, particularly in the Q&A session, but his 10 recommendations emphasised the benefits of EDI practice for the whole of society. For example, focussing on people and their real-world experience can help appeal to people’s shared sense of decency and fairness. Inclusive framing is an important part of this, avoiding ‘us vs them’ as the aim should be to build a “culture of curiosity and generosity – not criticism”.

Travelling home to West Wales at the end of the week there were a flurry of thoughts and reflections to process. However, from attending the wide-variety of sessions with presenters from all parts of the globe, the key take-home for me was the human element of education. Supporting well-being or equity, diversity and inclusion, for example, depends on people listening, recognising barriers and positively enacting change. Similarly, presenters sharing policies or curricula often found that these were only as effective as the people implementing them.

In our sometimes data and assessment driven educational practices  - let us challenge ourselves not to overlook the holistic, societal and personal impact we can have as educators.