Research

The Department of Education and Lifelong Learning (ELL) offers a rich environment for research, with opportunities in several sectors of post-compulsory education, business, commerce and lifelong learning in general.

 

The research focus of ELL is on learning in a changing world – the world of work, of professions and of organisations, as well as the world of universities. It covers academic practice in post-compulsory education, including higher education as well as professional practice in other organisations. It also investigates the current emphasis given to the knowledge transfer relationships between education institutions and workplaces.

Research in Educational, Academic and Professional Practices (REAPP)


The focus of research activity in ELL is captured in the department’s strap line ‘Learning and Knowledge in a Changing World’. This draws on the diverse academic experiences of the staff and refers to new ways of learning and new kinds of knowledge that are emerging across a number of subject areas and contexts, including organisations, education institutions and communities.

 

This context provides the focus and energy of a new research unit in ELL. The title of the Research Unit is ‘Research in Educational, Academic and Professional Practices’ (REAPP). REAPP is concerned with the learning and knowledge interests that are intrinsic to contemporary pedagogical, vocational and professional practices. The research programme draws on the expertise of academic staff in ELL, including their track records in research areas that are connected to a number of existing activities in the department, including Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the EDC, as well as research activities in relevant centres, such as the university-wide Centre for Research in Education and the E-Learning Unit.

 

The research programme aims to contribute to understandings about learning and knowledge that are relevant to academic communities, but also aspires to influence policy developments, as well as the practices of practitioners working in diverse settings across a range of post-compulsory education sectors and within work and organisations. These changes are concerned with:

  • the uptake of information and communication technologies
  • the valuing of learning throughout life
  • the focus on particular kinds of worker identities in training settings, workplaces
  • the changing structures and practices and organisation of work
  • the emphasis on partnerships
  • an increased focus on relevance, such as bringing ‘work’ into education programmes

The research programme interrogates and analyses these issues across a range of settings. For example, pedagogies and practices within Higher Education contexts; learning at work/in workplaces and for the professions; and policy and practice, teaching and learning in Further and Adult and Continuing Education. Overall, this work adopts and expresses an explicit analytical perspective that regards education as a ‘cradle to grave’ (lifelong) process.

 

The commitment to a theoretical diversity is demonstrated in much of this work, and aims to locate the research outputs within a robust social science framework, that is also characterised by a commitment to methodological rigour.

 

Staff within REAPP have been very successful at securing research grants from a range of sources. Academic staff have worked on collaboratively funded research projects with colleagues in the UK and beyond (for example, the Universities of Lancaster, Leicester, Edinburgh, Greenwich, Oxford Brookes, and the Institute of Education, University of London and, internationally, the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia and Brock University, Canada; but also local Further Education providers, such as City and Islington College; and local or regional government bodies such as Monmouthshire County Council and the New South Wales Education Department, Australia;). These sources of income include:

  • Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
  • Australian Research Council (ARC)
    Dept. for Education and Skills (DfES)
  • Higher Education Academy (HEA)
  • Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA)
  • Local government
  • Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK

Research-led Teaching and Developing Research Capacity

These aims and approach are also reflected in an approach to research-led teaching that involves research active staff teaching within and around their areas of research expertise; ensuring that professional practice for our postgraduate students is empirically informed; and that we are actively engaged in developing our students as ‘scholarly practitioners’ who are able to research and critique their own professional practice through conducting rigorous, reflective and critical enquiry. This conceptualisation of research-led teaching demonstrates that REAPP is committed to an integration of its related teaching programmes with the research activity and outcomes of its research-active staff.

 

In this way, the Research Unit is committed to developing and contributing to national levels of research capacity in education through supporting staff in completion and submission of PhD projects and in its approach to research-led teaching that aims to equip the educational sector in England (and London in particular) with ‘scholarly practitioners’ who are committed to and skilled in empirically-informed modes of professional practice.