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The research impacted on public policy, practitioners and professional services both nationally and regionally. Specifically, it influenced the setting up and design of the Greater Manchester Challenge (GMC) in 2008, with unfolding educational and professional impacts: (a) measurable improvements in the performance of Greater Manchester schools; (b) participants have continued to collaborate and build on GMC interventions and findings; and (c) the GMC led to a set of recommendations about school-to-school collaboration.
Educational effectiveness and improvement research by the University of Southampton School of Education has contributed significantly to the design and implementation of educational policy and practice at both national and international levels. Impact has been predominantly in the area of policy, but the School's ground-breaking research has also shown the effects of (and practice within) `good' schools and has pioneered novel approaches to school improvement, school organisation and the use of data in schools. The Educational Effectiveness and Improvement Group has helped establish the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) and given it a global reach; its research has directly informed policy implementation through academy chains, schools and local authorities in the UK generally and in Wales in particular, and internationally in the US, China, Sweden, Cyprus and Chile. The School's worldwide reach is among the most widespread in Education.
Extended schools research and related projects have contributed to debate and policy-making in the UK and in countries in Europe, Asia and Australasia post-2008 on the role of the school in relation to disadvantage. Our research has strongly informed English government policy 2008-11 and the actions (including funding and scaling up extended schools) taken to develop community-oriented, full-service and extended schools to help address the impact of disadvantage on educational outcomes. We have had sustained and far-reaching impact on the policy and actions of schools and local authorities (LAs) in their development of extended schools. Professional practice changes include greater willingness to collaborate across agencies and an amendment to policy on `raising aspirations' to become `reaching aspirations'. Additionally our innovative research methodology, a version of theory of change, has been taken up and used by schools, LAs and other organisations.
Educational performance tables — some comparing countries as well as schools — have come to assume great importance. They now influence not only parents' school choices but some national education policies. Tables can, however, mislead as well as enlighten. The three studies featured here demonstrate this and help to ensure that the public will be better informed in future. Two played a key role in convincing the government that it should revise England's school performance tables. The third gave civil servants and politicians good reason to be more circumspect about how they publicly interpret international pupil performance data.
The research impacted on both public policy and professional practice. Specifically the research has enabled the development of an overarching framework for linking interventions in social structures, families and schools, particularly at area level. This in turn has impacted principally (a) on organisational strategy and professional practice at local level; but also (b) on national policymaker decisions and processes involved in the transformation of the `Extended Schools' agenda; and (c) on thinking and strategy by policymakers in Europe and other countries internationally. Crucial to the impact process have been partnership relationships using a development and research (D&R) methodology with a wide range of local initiatives, together with support for change in national and trans-national policy in this field.
Since 2008, UK and overseas policies, practices and tools aimed at evaluating and promoting quality in schools and supporting student learning, attainment and progress have been profoundly influenced by research conducted at the University of Bristol. The work began in 2001 in the Graduate School of Education; from 2005, the School's efforts were complemented by those of the Centre for Multilevel Modelling. The research has generated original knowledge about school performance measures and school, teacher and context factors which promote student learning. This knowledge has transformed government and institutional policies and practices. New improved methods of evaluating schools and interventions in education (and other sectors) have been demonstrated and widely disseminated, thereby enhancing public understanding of institutional league tables and facilitating the scaling-up of new approaches nationally. The development of statistical methodology and MLwiN software and training has enabled more rigorous and sensitive quantitative analysis of educational datasets around the world, as well as wider take-up of this methodology by non academics.
A sustained and substantial research programme on teacher's lives and careers has influenced policy development, informed communities of practice and shaped leadership training materials and programmes. The work provides new insights into the complexity of teacher development which has been taken up widely around the world and used extensively by government policy makers and school leaders in the assessment of professional competencies and targeting of support to improve performance and enhance retention in the profession.
University of Brighton (UoB) research into the promotion and evaluation of rights-based, participatory approaches to teaching and learning has changed policies in schools, teachers' colleges, and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in three international and national contexts:
Impact is demonstrated through the ways in which research findings have been utilised by schools and Alternative Provision (AP) providers, to evaluate and remodel educational policies and practices. Evidence is presented to support the assertion that by seeking out the perspectives of children and young people, schools can become more critically aware of the complex educational, social, cultural and economic factors that serve to increase pupil exclusion, vulnerability and exposure to risk. An increase in professional understanding and awareness is demonstrated with reference to examples of personalised pastoral interventions, which respond directly to the needs of alienated and disaffected pupils.
This case study is based on research into the Dissolving Boundaries (DB) Programme which uses ICT and face to face contact to address post-conflict mistrust between young people in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (ROI). With funding from the Departments of Education in Belfast and Dublin, the programme has been operating in 300 schools since 1999. Research led by Austin (2004, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2013) has had an impact in four broad ways; first, on teacher professional development by refining practice of collaborative learning using ICT; second, on the quality of pupil learning, including perceptions of cultural difference; third, on government policy in the way ICT is assessed by requiring schools to use "exchange" as a new requirement and, fourth, internationally, through supporting the `north-south' strand of the Belfast Agreement 1998, and shaping similar work in England and the Middle East.