The BERA@40 History Web

As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations, BERA is creating a resource that charts some of the key moments over its lifetime - key moments both for the Association and also for educational research in the UK. Our intention is that this will draw as much as possible on existing resources (e.g. archive copies of our Journals, Presidential addresses, conference papers and the members’ newsletter, Research Intelligence) but we hope that it will not be confined to these. As you will see from the items elsewhere in this web, additional elements can be photographs, videos, interviews with key figures from both BERA and the discipline as a whole as well as views and comments from other sources such as Government Departments and funding agencies. There is a video introduction here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q14oIBAR_Nw Rather than compiling a book, our approach is to assemble a curated collection of digital artefacts that tell the history of the Association in multimedia format. These will include (among other items): • Interviews with luminaries of the discipline (eg, Council members, editors, conference organisers, distinguished members, etc) • Interviews with officers from government departments and funding agencies • Anecdotes submitted by individual members • Photographs • Videos • Key papers from BERA conferences • Key documents from the archives (eg, the original constitution) • Accounts of key developments in educational research From the outset, the project has involved the BERA membership as a resource to identify and acquire artefacts, and subsequently to help organise them within the collection. The artefacts are held within a specialised website that uses a timeline as an organising metaphor. They do not need to be of high quality. For example, the audio recordings of interviews and anecdotes can be made on a PC or laptop; videos can be recorded on Flip cameras or webcams. The emphasis is on capturing memories before they are lost, and capturing documents and photographs before they are consigned to the skip when someone (or their executors) clears out their study. Fopr the time being, these digital artefacts will be held in a stand-alone website but at the earliest opportunity they will be integrated with the BERA website where they can be readily accessed. We are inviting you to contribute your stories and any memorabilia that you have that helps to chart the history of the Association, and the history of educational research in general. We are also looking for your personal stories: what do you remember? who do you remember? what were the key issues? what were the debates? Please contact the project leader Nick Rushby at nick.rushby@conation-technologies.co.uk. Send an email with a brief description of your story and we’ll add it to the BERA@40 collection. We look forward to hearing from you with your contributions to your Association’s history.  © Unless otherwise indicated, all copyright in the material on this website is owned by the British Educational Research Association 2013-2014