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The IOE's Centre for Holocaust Education has transformed the way that this disturbing historical event is taught in many English schools. The Centre's highly regarded research-informed professional development programme has benefited thousands of teachers and ensured that an estimated 1m pupils experienced a deeper emotional and intellectual engagement with this difficult subject. The Centre has established a group of `Beacon Schools in Holocaust education' which have developed programmes of study that are now being shared with their own school networks throughout England. It has achieved international `reach' by producing educational materials for the UN and providing advice, training and consultancy for organisations such as Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's international Holocaust memorial museum.
In 2008, Professor Frank Hardman led a baseline study of pedagogic practices in Tanzanian primary schools to inform the design of a national school-based in-service education and training (INSET) programme. In February 2011, a pilot of the programme was launched and in August 2012 Hardman was commissioned to lead on an evaluation of the pilot, building on the 2008 baseline. Based on the findings of the 2012 evaluation, the Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MoEVT) and Prime Ministers' Office-Regional Administration and Local Government (PMO-RALG) are currently planning a national scale-up of the INSET programme.
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.
Successive research studies carried out by Professor Brahm Norwich in the Graduate School of Education have addressed the development of policy for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), shaped professional understanding of how best to teach pupils with SEN, and generated a resource to support teacher-educators and teacher trainees in meeting the needs of pupils with SEN. The research has driven a fundamental re-appraisal of how children with SEN should be taught, showing that many children with SEN do not require specialist teaching, but rather an intensification of the same general teaching methods used for non-SEN pupils. The research has resulted in the creation of a practical training tool for SEN teaching and a teacher-training tool designed on this basis has been disseminated nationally to teacher training providers. Testimonials indicate that the tool has contributed directly to improving the quality of teaching for pupils with SEN.
From 2000 to 2003 Professor Jean Rudduck led a largely Cambridge-based research team that investigated the potential of `student voice' to engage learners. The `Consulting Pupils about Teaching and Learning' research Network, funded by the ESRC's Teaching and Learning Research Programme, trialled and evaluated strategies with teachers in a wide range of schools. Take-up in the UK and abroad was extensive. This case study focuses on the impact in Ontario, Canada; where the Ministry of Education explicitly used the findings of Rudduck's research to mount an ambitious Student Voice initiative (2008-); the success of this has led to date to the Ministry providing some 6,000 grants to 800 schools to help build stronger approaches to `student voice' into the infra-structure of its school system.
The Haydn Scale is an instrument for considering the working atmosphere in classrooms and is used for teacher development by schools and Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers within and beyond the UK. Within the UK, it is the most widely used instrument for reflecting on and helping to understand deficits in classroom climate, and over the REF period, there is evidence to demonstrate that the scale is used worldwide. Large numbers of teacher educators, heads, teachers and student teachers have found it to be a useful resource in developing understanding of the factors influencing classroom climate and pupil behaviour.
As a direct result of the research conducted by the University of Edinburgh (1994-2009), policy and practice in relation to behaviour management in schools has come to emphasise the importance of i) the centrality of school ethos in promoting positive behaviour; ii) the need to tackle low-level negative behaviour, and iii) a range of interventions, including restorative practices. The significance of the research is that it fostered a cultural and policy change that led to continuous decreases in indiscipline and disciplinary exclusion from school, and a demonstrable increase in teacher confidence and skills in dealing with indiscipline. Beneficiaries of the research were pupils and teachers in primary, secondary and special schools, as well as parents. The research changed national policy and guidelines and positioned Scotland as a leader in research on behaviour and relationships in school and its application to policy and practice.
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 Pupil Premium Toolkit is an evidence-based resource for schools in England looking for guidance on spending their premium, which is in turn a funding policy to address the effects of poverty on attainment. The continuously developing Toolkit, created by researchers at Durham University, provides a unique cost/benefit summary of the relative impact of different teaching approaches in schools. Independent research suggests it is now used by at least 36% of school leaders in England in determining their spending priorities for the Pupil Premium and to review their support for disadvantaged pupils. It has had a direct impact on the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and its funding strategy for the £200 million it will spend over 15 years to reduce inequalities in school outcomes. The EEF's approach to commissioning research and evaluation is explicitly based on this synthesis of research evidence. The Toolkit has also directly influenced Government spending on education and the policy decisions of governments outside England. In March 2013, the Toolkit was identified as a model for the `What Works' network for social policy, which will inform over £200 billion of Government spending.
Research has led to enhanced teacher understanding and practice in developing higher-cognitive thinking, forms of exploratory peer talk and the comprehension of challenging whole texts in their students, leading to new assessment of children in Years 7-9. Additionally, the research has influenced new national training materials on exploratory talk for all secondary-school English teachers, developed students' learning in both talk and reading, and established best practice in English classrooms in these two key areas of literacy, throughout Sussex and beyond.