Log in
Recent decades have witnessed a rapid decline in youth participation in UK electoral politics, in terms of both voting and party membership. Many authors and political commentators view this situation as marking a crisis in British democracy. Sloam's research and his collaboration with user groups have addressed this important issue and strengthened efforts to engage young people in politics, broadly conceived. In particular, his work has highlighted the growing `participation gaps' between rich and poor young people in the UK and between young people in the UK and across the European Union. Sloam's work on teaching and learning within political science, on citizenship education and on the social role of higher education has informed policy and practice within the educational sector. His research on young people's political participation in British democracy has advanced knowledge about the nature of young people's politics, helping policy-makers form strategy, approaches and indices to create better engagement with the next generation of citizens.
Enacting citizenship research at The Open University's (OU) Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) is helping to re-define the idea of citizenship by contributing to policy and public debates across Europe. These research ideas are being used by European policymakers to reform European citizenship policies. Activists across Europe are increasingly using the research to give them a vocabulary through which they can understand their collective activism as European citizenship.
`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.
Through active engagement in policy processes, systems research at Lincoln produced a sustained change in governmental and third sector approaches to citizenship education and hence citizen participation. Translating and refining the initial concepts, a network of Third Sector organisations and universities (including the researchers) ran successful pilot projects to benefit more than 1,300 people. This led to the inclusion of the `Take Part' concept in three government White Papers. Pathways to impact were two national learning frameworks, an £8.7 million programme (2009-2011), and a £0.77m capacity building cluster (2008-2013). The programme reached over 18,000 people nationally, who became more effectively involved in local democracy.
Professor Andrew Dobson's research into environmental politics and, in particular, the nature, meaning, and policy relevance of the idea of `environmental citizenship', spans 25 years. This research has had, and continues to have, particular impact on two key areas:
(1) environmental campaigns for social, economic and political change, including being lead writer of the Green Party's 2010 General Election manifesto
(2) the portfolio of policies available to the Government, and to a range of bodies and organisations (including Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and commercial organisations), for encouraging more pro-environmental behaviour
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.
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.
UNESCO Centre research has impacted on education policy, locally and globally, attracting research grants of more than £6 m in the last decade. Three significant research impacts are: statutory inclusion of Local and Global Citizenship in the Northern Ireland Curriculum (NIC) for all schools from 2007; research on `conflict sensitive' education that provided the conceptual framework for the 2011 UNESCO Education Global Monitoring Report and has been used by UNICEF to secure funding addressing peace-building and education in conflict affected countries; and a rights-based indicators framework now used by the Northern Ireland Executive to monitor implementation of children's policies.
Across the Higher Education sector, in the UK and in much of Europe, university lecturers in professional fields are usually appointed on the basis of their practitioner experience and expertise, and they may have little prior experience of teaching at Higher Education level or of research activity. The impact of the research in this case study has been on individuals, Heads of Department, academic developers and universities across the UK in influencing changes in academic induction practices leading to enhanced professional development of university lecturers in professional fields, especially in teacher education, nursing and the allied health professions. The dissemination of the research included the publication by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) of guidelines for academic induction of teacher educators.
The global pledge of achieving Education For All by 2015 is compromised by providers' reliance on education services that are designed for sedentary users and exclude nomadic pastoralists. Dr Caroline Dyer (University of Leeds; Senior Lecturer in Development Practice, 2004-2011; Reader in Education in Development, 2011- present) has re-visioned approaches to education for nomadic groups through her analysis of how public policy perpetuates pastoralists' educational marginalisation and design of research-based models of service provision that can deliver pastoralists' right to education inclusion without compromising their mobile livelihoods. Her research led to changes in national policy strategy and re-designed service delivery in Kenya in 2010, shaped policy debate in Afghanistan from 2012, and has supported community and NGO advocacy in India since 2008.