Before moving to a career in education, Rebecca trained as a Jeweller, achieving a BA(Hons) in Jewellery design from Central St Martins College of Art and Design. Rebecca worked for 6 years as a jeweller, showing her work and selling in galleries in the UK and Europe. Rebecca found her natural fit in the early years where her creativity was a strength and enabled her to find new and innovative ways to support children’s learning.
Rebecca has over 18 years’ experience working in education, specialising in early years. She completed her PGCE at the Institute of Education (IoE) in London and worked as a reception class teacher in Tower Hamlets, East London. It was there that she discovered her passion for supporting children’s learning and research. After taking part in an Action Research project in partnership with the IoE, she left full-time teaching to complete her MRes, which then led her to leading the Early Years, Primary PGCE route at the University of Warwick, during this time she successfully achieved her FHEA award.
Dr Rebecca Bartram's particular interest in supporting children’s personal, social and emotional development and wellbeing continued and the growing interest and attention on self-regulation led her to her PhD, exploring how self-regulation is understood and supported in the reception classroom.
Rebecca is dyslexic and passionate about ensuring that all children have positive experiences at school, and can achieve their potential, removing barriers and obstacles to this by working to improve the education system. When Rebecca began her career from classroom reaching into research and academia, she thought she needed to find her voice, what she learned on her PhD journey through capturing the voice of the child, it is the child’s voice she needed to find and make heard in her work.
Following the completion of her PhD she undertook a 6 month secondment at the DfE working with Longitudinal Studies Team, supporting on the Education outcomes panel surveys (EOPS). Rebecca then returned to the classroom as a learning support teacher, working with and leading the learning for a group of Year 1 (6yr) Autistic children. This experience reconnected Rebeca with her passion to work towards having a positive impact on the wellbeing and achievement of all children in our education system.
Dr Rebecca Bartram's research interests include the practical application of positive pedagogy to support self-regulation in schools and initial teacher training; how the cognitive shifting necessary for self-regulation connects with intentional virtuous behaviour and how supporting the development of self-regulation in the early years can also lay foundations for the development of character and virtue. How we can develop and deepen our understanding of character education through special educational needs, and how this can then be implemented to become an inclusive tool to support all children and young people to flourish.