Gemma Moss.

Harvey Goldstein, who has died of Covid-19 at the age of 80, has left a formidable legacy from his work, both as a statistician and as a campaigner for more careful scrutiny of assessment data in education – whose misuse he consistently queried.

Harvey’s career included posts at the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH); as Professor of Statistical Methods, Institute of Education (IOE), University of London, 1977 – 2004; and as Professor of Social Statistics at the School of Education, University of Bristol, 2005-2020, where he remained working right up until his death.

He represented a rare combination of statistical insight, rigour and inventiveness, coupled with a fierce desire to call out the abuse of data in public debate and broaden conceptions of what evidence-informed policy should really look like. In all these ways (more…)

Chris Watkins. 
Jerome Bruner, one of the most influential writers of our times in the fields of psychology, culture and education died aged 100 on June 5 2016. His writing scored much more than a century: it set up enduring understandings about humanity.
His dynamic development started with psychology but became more extensive and more integrated, especially with the concept of narrative, and his own story illustrates the ideas and understandings as they developed.
He was born on October 1 1915 in New York City to Herman and Rose Bruner, Polish Jewish immigrants. I hesitate to mention that because Jerry’s research (1957) demonstrated that an introduction with such categories leads our perceptions to continue focusing on them. Jerry never smoothly fitted other people’s categories. He was born blind and didn’t have sight until the age of two. I do not hesitate to mention that because Jerry has helped us see (more…)