BERA Conference - Manchester

---

Playing a bit of catch-up with the blog here. We've already had our brief visit to Paris and are now at Blois in the Loire Valley. But more of all that later - first a little bit about Manchester and the conference I attended there last week.

The British Educational Research Association (BERA) held its annual conference this year at the University of Manchester. It was my first visit to Manchester. I travelled there and back from Northumberland by train, via York and then across the beautiful Pennines. While I didn't get a lot of time to visit around Manchester, it is clearly a well looked-after Victorian era city with many modern developments - not unlike Melbourne in that regard.

As to the conference itself - a few observations and highlights:

. A day shorter than previous years, with fewer individual presentations (which were generally of a high standards)

. Quite a strong Australian presence, though less than previously

. A strong sense that university-based teaching and enquiry in Education are at risk in England in particular

. Good keynote lectures - especially one by Jon Coles (formerly Director General of Education Standards) on the topic of the relationship between research and policy making. "Policy and practice without research are blind, but research without policy and practice is mere intellectual play".

. My presentation - fairly well attended, in a set of three that went well together. I did hear a couple of other presenters refer to mine (positively!) during their own presentations.

Enjoy the pictures.

---

Photos

Visitor Centre - University of Manchester
The main venue for the 2012 BERA Conference