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Researchers from Oxford Brookes University have significantly contributed towards driving improvements to teaching and learning through an evidence-based approach. They have influenced practice and policies, whilst challenging public perceptions about the impact of education. Through their partnership with the University of Westminster, the Westminster Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training has improved teaching and learning in the Learning and Skills Sector, engaged with the design and delivery of enterprise education programmes for Further Education leaders and championed the status of vocational education. They have actively contributed to public debates and their research continues to be disseminated and used in training throughout the UK.
A unique insight in The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (2008), and developed through an ESRC Seminar Series, is that a therapeutic ethos in education is creating a diminished human subject through a `dual attack' on the human subject as a knowing subject and the subject-based curriculum.
A conscious public defence of the subject-based curriculum was then undertaken through seminars, debates and conferences involving think tanks, charities and union organisations. The appointment of Professor Dennis Hayes to the London Mayoral Education Inquiry (2012) was one consequence. The Inquiry resulted in funding of £24.5 million for the London Schools Excellence Fund.
The research in this impact case study has affected discourses concerning professional development and pedagogy from early years classrooms to higher education. By challenging orthodoxies, researchers have delivered new and generative understandings of teacher knowledge that have influenced debate in educators' communities and professional associations. Consequently, these bodies have used our research to guide their approach to the advancement of policy, practice and professional development in all education sectors. The impacts of our research have reached out to a range of national contexts including the UK, Australia, Cyprus, and South Africa.
A twelve-year programme of research (2001-12) led by Professor Gareth Parry on higher education in further education colleges has produced impacts on policy development, institutional strategy and professional practice in England. The beneficiaries are the central authorities for higher and further education, the colleges of further education and their university partners, college managers and tutors, and thereby students and employers. The types of impact are changes to national funding and reporting arrangements; enhancements to policy and organisational learning; and contributions to institutional capacity-building. The vehicles for achieving impact are collaborations with policy, professional and practitioner communities through expert programmes, consultancies, databases, directories and guides to good practice. The reach of the impact is national, cross-sector and institutional, with a wider influence on debates across the UK and international developments including in Australia.
The mode and structure of initial teacher education (ITE) is an instrumental factor in the quality of pupil learning and educational attainment. University of Glasgow research had a direct role in re-shaping ITE by substantially influencing Teaching Scotland's Future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland, the government's most comprehensive and radical review of teacher education and professional learning for the last 20 years. The final government report specifically called for a `hub model' of teaching schools, similar to a model being piloted at Glasgow, to be introduced across Scotland, effecting a transformation in the way that Scotland's 49,000 teachers are initially taught and trained.
`Opening up education' is a sustained theme of the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET). Across more than 25 projects, active from 2008, our research has been instrumental in establishing and shaping the global agenda in open education, especially through open licensing of content and tools. Our evidence-driven and action research has two strands of impact:
Our innovative collaborations and community engagement are international with examples of practice in Brazil, Africa and Europe, and strategic influences in USA, UK and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Student as Producer connects academic teaching, undergraduate research and student engagement at the level of curriculum design and practice within HE institutions, which has in turn affected national HE teaching agencies approach to developing practice. The impact includes:
The IOE researchers featured in this case study have had a major and sustained impact on education in the Indian sub-continent. Geeta Kingdon has shaped UK government policy on educational aid to India. She has also helped to ensure that millions of poor children in Uttar Pradesh — India's most populous state — qualify for free places in private schools. Angela Little's work in Sri Lanka has raised the profile of primary education, which has been hampered by low status and inadequate funding. She has also done much to improve the life chances of the country's disadvantaged children — particularly those growing up on tea plantations.
Prior to 2004 there was no accurate way of determining the value of education to the UK economy. Moreover, education had not previously been considered as part of the economy in the same way as, for example, manufacturing. At this time the British Council commissioned Geraint Johnes to produce a methodology for evaluating the global value of all education exports. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills used this on 2008-2010 data to calculate its worth at £14.1bn to the UK. BIS have re-used this methodology in subsequent years and estimated that by 2025 the UK value will increase to £26.6bn. The research has also been used in the ongoing debate on immigration and UK Border Agency policy for example the revoking of visas by London Metropolitan University in August 2012, which was widely publicised by national and international media. It has also been frequently cited in government papers and in Parliament.
The Lecturer Self-efficacy Project is a national and international collaboration led by Professor John Sharp at Bishop Grosseteste University (UK) and Dr Brian Hemmings at Charles Sturt University (Australia). The project was initiated to develop a diagnostic instrument or resource to measure confidence in core academic function (research, teaching, other) with a view to enhancing professional practice across the UK Higher Education sector. The Project claims reach and significance in impact on practitioners and the development of professional services at organisational and departmental levels. This was achieved by stimulating debate and challenging conventional wisdom, thereby influencing the management of professional standards and guidelines on recruitment and training and by using research findings to define best practice and formulate policy towards research capacity building and strategic decision-making.