As the expatriate population continues to grow rapidly, the UAE doubles down on maintaining high behaviour standards. Bravo. 👏🏼 👇🏼 "UAE schools issue 12 strict rules for students and parents as new academic year begins" gulfnews.com/uae/educatio...

Research Box has arrived at @wholeeducation.bsky.social's Annual Conference! Whether you’re curious about action research, looking for fresh approaches to school improvement, or just want to say hello... we’d love to connect. 📍 See you there! www.myresearchbox.com

🧠⭐️ A fantastic day at Neuroscience for Education's Annual Conference. ⭐️🧠 A brilliant opportunity to hear from expert speakers and to connect with those keen to use action research to embed evidence-informed approaches and drive teacher-led inquiry. www.myresearchbox.com

Why is NVivo always soooooo glitchhyyyyy. 🤯 The whole software is giving 90s vibes, but I can't find an adequate replacement. Any suggestions?!

It is utterly absurd that the system has deteriorated to the point where, instead of fulfilling their statutory duty to secure their own EP assessments, a local authority has had to reimburse parents nearly £26,475 for arranging these assessments themselves... www.bbc.com/news/article...

I think the huge overreach in this abstract is a big issue. One cannot claim, after interviewing 6 students in 1 school, that "findings suggest autistic students are routinely overstimulated...& lack adequate support to overcome sensory barriers in m/s settings" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Very pleased to see this paper published open access in BMC Psychology today, where we interviewed 24 young people to discover their thoughts towards online single-session interventions. It is the FIRST qualitative paper to focus on SSIs in UK-based young people 🤯 doi.org/10.1186/s403...

Thoroughly enjoyed this paper from Smith et al (2025) which makes an excellent contribution to the debate around the current state of educational research. It's critical we find ways to support methodological plurality so we can ask broad and varied qs. doi.org/10.1002/berj...

*Highlights the *perceived* impact... While I'm not questioning the teachers' experience, professional perception is not the best proxy for what's *actually* influencing student behaviour. Lots of claims that Andrew Tate (et al) are driving an increase in misogyny but we lack any solid inquiry.

Another great day data collecting today. I will never stop being grateful to all the young people who are willing to share their views within research.

As the F1 season has excitingly restarted full of energy, I'm reminded again of what a complete CHAMPION Sir Lewis Hamilton is. Rarely do you get a sportsman so talented, so determined, so ELITE but also so full of class, respect, and humility. A true king - SIR Lewis. 👑

Effective guides to self-help for mental health? It is beyond sickening to discover that someone who paraded so publicly, so virtuously, has now been convicted for child rxpe of a 12 year old. This is where a beyond challenge or question culture gets us. 👇🏼 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I absolutely hate that the term "my truth" is still being used in place of "my perspective/view/experience".

Happy International Women's Day. 🤍

This thread speaks to my thoughts entirely. 👇🏼 Action research can be a powerful tool for self-directed professional development and school improvement. It's why a colleague and I founded Research Box - to make this manageable for schools and teachers. Check it out here. 🔗 www.myresearchbox.com

This also reflects my concerns about blanket approaches to language and terminology in any direction. If anything, we know individual preferences can differ hugely, and language choices are highly contextual - so a "we never" or "we always" approach doesn't ever seem the best way.

This certainly does not reflect linguistics-based research on mental health/illness. This campaign seems to conflate the verbs ‘have’ and ‘be’, whereas ‘having’ a mental illness is usually reported as preferable to ‘being’ a mental illness

Really pleased to have been part of the team who authored this new article: 'Applied Principles for Inclusive Practice in Neurodevelopmental Research: A Selection and Report of Illustrative Case Studies'. Huge thanks to @cjcrompton.bsky.social & @suereviews.bsky.social for bringing us all together!

There are so many fascinating psychological theories, concepts and phenomena to explore. I find it incredibly difficult not to fall down rabbit holes of entirely new reading.

Another fantastic day data collecting in a wonderful school. I'm always so grateful to be able to conduct research in schools, especially when it involves working with students whose voices are often excluded from educational research.

⚠️ Some universal mental health interventions in schools are having an ADVERSE effect on well-being outcomes. ⚠️ This evaluation report makes the work being done by people like @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social all the more important. We must proceed with caution. www.gov.uk/government/p...

It's Saturday night, and I'm sitting on the sofa contemplating the order in which to tackle: - amendments to a paper for submission - starting analysis on a new data set - reworking a previous chapter - drafting a new chapter Gosh, I'm a real loser these days. 😂

🚦 Big Ofsted news this morning - Schools Week has you covered … News: Report card plan revealed schoolsweek.co.uk/five-grades-... Views: Martin Oliver Q&A schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-chief... Round-up: The 11 key proposals schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-schoo...

I'm continually directing school leaders and safeguarding leads to the work of @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social's lab. While we all want to support students' social/emotional health, it's vital schools do not lean in to mass 'mental health intervention'.

Reflecting on a wonderful few days at the BSME Leadership Conference in Abu Dhabi. A fantastic chance to showcase Research Box and how we can support schools to develop teacher research literacy and conduct high quality action research. www.myresearchbox.com

I can hardly bear to scroll instagram these days. "Influencers" are bad enough when they stay in their lane of mindlessly promoting products they would probably never use, but when they move into advice on topics on which they have ZERO expertise? I cannot.

Field of experience influences how we co-create & interpret meaning within social communication. Given that autistic & non-autisitic people have very different FoE - we can see how misunderstandings can occur. This is central to my research on discussing big decisions with autistic young people.

It was a real pleasure to present yesterday at the @scdtp.bsky.social Final Year PhD Conference. It was also incredibly inspiring to hear about the wide range of research going on across our fantastic network.

Having a PhD "fully funded" by the ESRC is a huge privilege. But it is still completely financially non-viable for most with mortgages, dependents, and other significant expenses without an additional source of income. This blocks so many phenomenal people from pursuing Doctoral study.

The journal Autism Research "does not publish papers that report pilot or preliminary studies" "does not publish papers that are based solely on qualitative data" "rarely publishes papers where data are based solely on survey or online samples" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... editorial, free

A probably well-meaning but ill thought through recommendation. There is no single measure of 'wellbeing' & infleunce over emotional/mental state is multi factorial. Schools 'measuring' this runs huge risk of tokenism, over simplification, & over pathologisation simultaneously.

If you are interested in training for your school or Trust on - • EHC Needs Assessments • Annual Reviews • Requests for particular schools • EHCP funding • Tribunal protocols • Case law And all associated timelines and processes - please feel free to get in touch!

As a previous LA Head of Service, I often provide advice & training to schools on statutory processes relating to EHCPs. Sadly, I'm never shocked by the level of misinformation schools receive - and remain greatly concerned that there are so many schools operating under extreme LA non-compliance.

23 year old me was shocked to find my secondary students didn't really find me cool... Safe to say, nearly 15 years later, I'm certainly not perceived as being any cooler. 🙃😂

Absolutely. Research is not a silver bullet - it is the process of combining research findings with professional expertise that enhances practice choices.

Things that need to get in the bin for 2025: • Word clouds! False illusion of qualitative analysis that rarely communicates anything meaningful.🗑

There's a lot to be said for engaging with diverse and ranging viewpoints. As I'm never one for echochambers, here's to a 2025 of actively seeking out interaction and collaboration with differently minded people.

I'm really looking forward to speaking at A-Fest 2025 on 25th February! If you're interested in autism research, practice, and understanding autistic lived experiences, this is a must attend event. Check out www.springfieldsautismsupport.co.uk/news-and-eve... for tickets.

New paper: general protocol built by youth&academic researchers+ guidance on interview co-design, co-interviewing, co-analysis and an evaluation of specific application of the protocol about experiences of coproducers and the experiences of interviewees acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

🚨 New research alert from my amazing lab at @unisouthampton.bsky.social 🚨 The School Daze comic is a fantastic resource to support educational transition, and this paper provides a helpful overview of its co-creation. 👇🏼 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

NEW ARTICLE: In this short piece, Jack Andrews and I argue that, based on the evidence we now have, the field should move away from universal school-based mental health interventions and focus on more effective alternatives acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... summary thread below:

The @unisouthampton.bsky.social IT Helpdesk is just so fantastic. Goodness knows where we would all be without it! 🙏🏼🏅

Lovely to receive positive feedback from my session last week for primary PGCE trainees. A really thoughtful group who will hopefully start their career thinking inclusively!

I'm so looking forward to a day of interviewing young people. Without a doubt, one of the greatest research pleasures.

A lot of academics really underestimate how inaccessible most research is for busy classroom teachers. If I started a new education research journal, there would be a mandatory half page 'key message to teachers' box at the outset of each paper.

This "timeliness"-to-impact connection 1) should make some public policy journals seriously reevaluate their timelines for review and publication 2) is likely a big part of why working papers have become so central to the discussions of research in the press, on podcasts, etc. #edpolicy #edusky

I honestly should have seen this coming, but if you are running surveys with open ended questions be careful! We got some Chat-GPT crafted answers in a recent survey asking about the pros and cons of phones in schools! We now learned how to block copy-pasting into Qualtrics.

🚨 Fully funded PhD for research into autistic experiences of home education. 🚨 My incredible research network ACoRNS is advertising for a fully funded PhD to start in Sept 2025. Follow the information below to find out more. 👇🏼 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Very excited to get started on data collection for a new study today. 🤓🔎