Latest News & Updates

How engaged are teachers with research?

research briefing published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) looks at what progress has been made in embedding evidence-informed practice within teaching in England.

New guide to engaging with evidence

The Institute for Effective Education has published a new guide to help those new to engaging with evidence.

Teachers and schools are being encouraged to become more evidence-based or evidence-informed, the aim being to use evidence to improve teaching practice. By acting on the best evidence, it increases the likelihood that we will make better decisions.

But how do we identify the best evidence? Whether it is a blog or a research article, with so much information out there, how can you find the evidence that is useful and reliable?

Evidence-informed education: taking stock, looking ahead

The purpose of this CEBE workshop, held at the Wellcome Trust last November, was to exchange thinking about the direction for evidence-informed education in the next few years, by reflecting on the past. The future role of CEBE in facilitating collaboration was also considered, again in relation to its previous work.

Leading Research Engagement In Education

On April 4th 2017, the Coalition for Evidence Based Education (CEBE) launched its newest publication, Leading Research Engagement in Education, at UCL’s Institute of Education.

Making good use of research has the potential to improve education provision. Teachers are increasingly expected to use research to improve their practice but there is little guidance available on the process by which a school can become research-engaged.

New editor wanted for Evidence & Policy

The journal Evidence & Policy is inviting applications for a new editor, or co-editors, to take over from the current editorial team in January 2018.  Ev&P is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between research evidence and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners, as well as researchers.  The journal is international and cross disciplinary.

School-University Knowledge Exchange Schemes (SUKES)

A project team within the EIPPEE Network continues to study schemes in various EU countries in which universities, schools (and sometimes municipal authorities) work in partnership to address problems of practice. A paper about their work on challenges and success factors, drawing on a survey, case studies and theoretical models, has recently been published in the journal Evidence and Policy.

What Works Global Summit

The Campbell Collaboration, the Centre for Evidence and Social Innovation (Queen's University Belfast), the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and Sense about Science are running the first What Works Global Summit in London. The event runs from 26-28 September (with pre-conference workshops on 24-25 September) and addresses evidence-informed policy globally across all sectors, with active participation from both producers and users of evidence. Among the many sessions are:

Royal Society and British Academy launch call for evidence on education research

The British Academy and the Royal Society have launched a project to investigate the opportunities and challenges for teachers, researchers and policy-makers as the key actors at a time when the demand for educational research is growing whilst the research capacity appears to be shrinking. They have also launched a Call for views and would welcome evidence from anyone who works with educational research, who manages or who is a user of educational research.

What works to increase research use?

A new systematic review from the EPPI-Centre at the Institute of Education looks at what works to increase research use by decision-makers. The review included 23 reviews whose relevance and methodological quality were judged appropriate.

There was reliable evidence that the following were effective:

Call for papers on evidence-informed practice

Professor Carol Campbell (Knowledge Network for Applied Educational Research) and Julie Nelson (NFER) co-hosted a round-table discussion at the International Congress for School Improvement and Effectiveness, and simultaneously issued a call for papers for a special issue of Educational Research on evidence-informed practice in education.