REDI researchers win award for best BERJ article of 2020

Eve Mayes and Ros Black

REDI’s Dr Rosalyn Black and Dr Eve Mayes have been awarded the 2021 British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) Editors’ Choice Award for their article Feeling voice: The emotional politics of ‘student voice’ for teachers.

The awards recognise five papers published in 2020 that stand out as examples of innovative scholarship on important issues for educational practice and the field of educational research itself. The winning articles are selected by the editors from nominations received from the BERJ editorial board.

The paper by Dr Black and Dr Mayes, considers the emotional complexities of teachers’ experiences with the popular school reform strategy of ‘student voice’, based on data from a three-year evaluation study commissioned by the VicSRC, the peak body representing school-aged students.

“When talking about ‘voice’ in schools, we need to have nuanced conversations about the profoundly emotional experience of teaching and learning, as well as pay greater attention to how teachers’ work and sense of their professional selves are being reconfigured in contemporary education systems,” Dr Mayes said.

The BERJ is the flagship journal of British Educational Research Association and showcases the very best of educational research from around the world.

“It is wonderful to receive this recognition from one of the leading journals in educational research,” Dr Black said.