We begin this ambiguous New Year on an upbeat note: Chris Brooks demurs at the prevailing doom and gloom with which we farewelled 2020, noting causes for collective pride. Yet there is also a blunt closing challenge: in his rural village ‘flat-earthers’ display ‘thoughtless thinking and a failure to identify and examine the facts’. ‘Surely this is a major educational failure. What should we do?’ Brooks asks.

You are invited to submit information for the next edition of the Newsletter for European Research in Learning and Work [L&W], due to appear at the beginning of February 2021.