Browse our current research projects

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  Foreign language learning and its impact on wider academic outcomes: A rapid evidence assessment

  A Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) of the best available research on the effectiveness of foreign language teaching approaches and the impact of foreign language learning on wider academic outcomes.

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  Trust and Climate Change: information for teaching in a digital age

  This collaboration between educational researchers, climate scientists, and teachers is critically exploring the teaching of climate change in schools.

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  Teaching Effective Early Mathematics and Understanding in Primary (TEEMUP) study

  The intervention aims to have an impact on maths development for children in Reception and Year 1 during the 16-month lifespan of the programme.

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  Building an Inclusive and Equitable Early Childhood Education for Refugee Children: Framework for Action

  There is a policy imperative to support sustainable early childhood education (ECE) for refugee children in the Global South. This study investigates the impact ECE has on development of refugee child

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  TalkTogether: Supporting Oral Language Development

  An international collaborative research project on children’s oral language development in early childhood focusing on urban poor communities in India and The Philippines.

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  Excluded Lives

  Excluded Lives aims to understand the contextual & institutional processes that lead to different types of school exclusion & the consequences for young people, families, schools & professionals.

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  Outcomes of Open Adoption in Australia

  A landmark research project into the outcomes of open adoption from out- of-home care in Australia.

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  Born into care: towards inclusive guidelines when the state intervenes at birth

  This project will devise and test an evidence-informed guideline designed to inform practice when the State intervenes to protect infants at birth through care proceedings.

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  Evaluation of Bright Spots

  This evaluation assesses the impact on policies and practice for looked after children when local authorities take part in the Bright Spots Programme.

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  The Automated Test of Language AbilitieS – ATLAS

  This project finalises a new language assessment App running on a tablet.

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  Definitions of examination standards in public examinations internationally

  Definitions of examination standards in public examinations internationally

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  R ‘intsvy’ package

  Dr Daniel Caro is developing a package in R for the analysis of international datasets.

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  Developing appropriate assessments of English language fluency for children with English as an Additional Language (EAL)

  Developing appropriate assessments of English language fluency for children with English as an Additional Language (EAL)

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  Evaluating effectiveness of education systems and instructional approaches with PISA data

  Evaluating effectiveness of education systems and instructional approaches with PISA data

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  Judging demands and predicting task difficulty: A systematic review of the literature

  Dr Yasmine El Masri has been awarded funding to conduct a systematic review on judging demands and predicting task difficulty.

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  Indicators of education system effectiveness

  Dr Jenny Lenkeit has been awarded a small grant from the John Fell OUP Research Fund to conduct research on indicators of education system effectiveness.

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  Using Technology in Science Tasks: Reducing the Language Barrier for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

  Mathematics and science are taught and assessed in a foreign language (English or French) in Lebanon; not Arabic, the first language of most students.

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  Aga Khan University Language Policy Thinking Group

  Aga Khan University Language Policy Thinking Group

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  Achievement growth and differential school effectiveness in Peru

  Dr. Daniel Caro has secured funding from the World Bank for a longitudinal study about differential school effectiveness in Peru.

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  Intelligent Accountability

  Accountability regimes have been introduced in education systems at all levels around the world

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  PIRLS for Teachers project

  The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

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  Examination reform: The impact of linear and modular examinations at GCSE

  This project includes a broad research programme on the structural reforms of GCSE

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  Assessment for Learning in Africa (AFLA project)

  Assessment for Learning in Africa (AFLA): Improving Pedagogy and Assessment for Numeracy in Foundation Years

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  Setting and maintaining standards in national examinations

  Examination standards are not well defined in theoretical terms and this leads to problems in their public understanding, with consequent periodic crises in public confidence.

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  Assessment and Psychometrics Research Fellowship

  Assessment practice and research is dominated by psychometric ways of thinking. We think psychometrics is valuable, but these techniques are not the only way to view assessment issues.

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  IB Critical Thinking

  The effect of the Diploma Programme on Critical Thinking Development: An International Multisite Evaluation

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  How do we know if children’s social care services make a difference? Developing an outcomes framework

  This study aims to design an outcomes framework for Children’s Social Care Services based on the views of those who plan, deliver and use these services as well as the existing evidence base.

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  Regional Adoption Agencies: an evaluation

  An evaluation of new models of providing adoption services in England

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  Social Impact Bond – Moving from Residential to Foster Care

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  Bright Spots: the subjective wellbeing of looked after children

  An action research project that aims to help local authorities better understand the needs of the children they look after through an anonymous online survey for looked after children aged 4-18yrs.

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  Evaluation Co-ordinator for Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme (DfE)

  The Rees Centre was appointed as Evaluation Co-ordinator across the entire programme for round one, 2014-2016.

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  Ethics review of machine learning in children’s social care

  Assess applicability of existing ethical frameworks to current machine learning practices, identify complexities of children's social care which would influence ethics of using machine learning

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  Hadley Programme- Adoption

  A range of adoption related projects led by Professor Julie Selwyn.

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  Hadley Programme- Kinship Care Research

  A range of kinship care related projects have been led by Professor Julie Selwyn.

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  Hadley Programme- Foster Care

  A range of fostercare related projects have been led by Professor Julie Selwyn.

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  Hadley Programme – Looked After Children

  Projects led by Professor Julie Selwyn

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  Concepts of care for separated migrant children

  Study led by the Open University investigates how separated child migrants and those involved in their care make sense of care relationships and care practices.

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  Cost calculator for children’s services

  A software tool that can be used to explore the relationship between needs, costs and outcomes of services provided to looked after children.

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  Linking care and educational data: the educational progress of looked after children in England

  First major study in the UK to explore educational outcomes, young people’s care histories and individual characteristics by linking national datasets.

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  Unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people: educational provision

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  The Alex Timpson Attachment and Trauma Programme In Schools

  This five year research programme aims to increase understanding of the role of attachment and trauma in educational outcomes for children - especially those who are in care or vulnerable

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  Teenagers in foster care: the critical role of carers and other adults

  An ESRC funded seminar series to address issues around fostering teenagers including offending, sexual exploitation and asylum seekers

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  Impact of Unproven Allegations on Foster Carers

  A study exploring the impact of unproven allegations on foster carers in order to improve the way that allegations are dealt with by fostering services, local authorities and the police.

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  Family Justice Observatory

  The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory will improve the use of data and research evidence in the family justice system in England & Wales in order to support the best possible decisions for children.

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  Exclusion of Looked After Children from English secondary schools

  A longitudinal mixed methods study (October 2017-June 2019) exploring reasons for fixed term exclusions, outcomes by age 16 and perspectives of those involved.

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  Attachment Aware Schools Programme Evaluation

  Evaluation of Attachment Awareness programmes in schools in three local authorities using a mixed methods approach.

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  Access, retention and graduate outcomes for H.E. students with a background of care or family estrangement

  A mixed methods study exploring the factors that influence outcomes in higher education for care-experienced or estranged students.

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  Care leavers’ transition into the labour market in England

  This large-scale study explores in detail what factors, including earlier education and training, contribute to whether care leavers are in employment at age 21.

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  Development of an AI application & training module for frontline health care (Onyx Project)

  This project is developing a training module and artificial intelligence (AI) health application to support frontline health care staff to screen for health issues.

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  Starting Out Right: Early Education and Looked After Children

  A study exploring access to and quality of early years provision for looked after children and with a view to reducing risk of developmental delay.

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  Quality and Inequality in the Early Years

  A project investigating whether three- and four-year-olds in deprived areas experience lower quality early years provision.

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  Understanding the ‘Value’ of Humanities Degrees

  This project aims to examine the impact humanities degrees have on society by examining the labour market outcomes and career trajectories of Humanities graduates from the University of Oxford.

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  Supporting secondary mathematics teachers to enhance their students’ proof competencies

  This project aims to further develop a Teacher Professional Development Intervention for supporting secondary mathematics teachers to enhance their students’ proof competencies.

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  Internationalisation of HE as a public good: a comparative study in four national systems

  The aim of this project is to examine inward student mobility and how it relates to the production of national and global public goods in four countries: France, the UK, Japan and China.

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  Local and global public good contributions of higher education: a comparative study in six national systems

  This project aims to build a comprehensive and internationally generic method for monitoring, measuring and judging the public benefits of universities, using empirical research in six countries.

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  Brexit, trade, migration and higher education

  This project investigates the implications, implementation and consequences of Brexit for UK universities, including the effects in relation to migration, international education and financial sustain

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  LiFT: Learning for Families through Technology

  The LiFT research programme sets a forward-looking agenda for children’s education and entertainment, underpinned by research evidence on children’s learning through digital technology

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  Assessment for Learning in Africa: Improving Pedagogy and Assessment for Numeracy in Foundation Years

  To conduct research on formative assessment in primary school early years’ numeracy contexts in Tanzania, East Africa and two sites in South Africa.

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  Effective Pre-school, Primary & Secondary Education

  A longitudinal study of over 3,000 children from birth to the end of school looking at influences on cognitive, educational and social development at different stages of the child’s life.

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  The potential of biophysiology for understanding learning and teaching experiences

  This project interested in the potential role of biophysiology (e.g., heart rate, cortisol, electrodermal activity, physical activity) for teaching and learning in educational contexts.

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  The curriculum development by Training Managers (TMs) for WorldSkills Competitions and its translation into Further Education and Private Training Provider delivery in the UK

  This research focuses on understanding how training managers transfer the experience, knowledge and skills from WorldSkills to their role in an FE College or Private Training Provider.

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  Explanatory Modelling of Rater Behaviour

  This project seeks to determine how the assessment tasks of category selection (e.g., a rubric-based “scoring” decision) and comparative judgment are cognitively different from one another.

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  Multaka Oxford Evaluation

  An evaluation of the Multaka Oxford collaborative project to offer development opportunities to people from refugee communities through museum volunteering.

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  A review of the current evidence about science education in formal education settings

  This project aims to examine the relationship between socioeconomic status and participation and attainment in science education.

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  Stop Start: A review of Children’s Centres in England

  A survey of local authorities in England to investigate closure and change in Children’s Centre provision for disadvantaged families and their children.

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  Mindsets and Diversity: understanding and addressing attainment gaps amongst Oxford undergraduates in highly mathematical subjects

  This project aims to understand attitudinal factors affecting underperformance and progression of some groups of Oxford undergraduates in highly mathematical subjects.

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  Building on Design Matters? The co-design of guidance on building schools

  School design can be problematic and schools which are being rebuilt or newly created are seeking guidance as to how to improve the complex processes of design and construction.

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  Design Matters? The Effects of New Schools on Students’, Teachers’ and Parents’ Actions and Perceptions

  This is a study of post-occupancy usage of five newly built schools. Its aim is to understand the impacts of the design of such schools on students’, teachers’ and parents’ actions and perceptions.

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  Building an Evidence Network for Community Health Worker Training

  This project aims to support Community Healthcare Workers’ education in Lower and Middle-Income Countries focused on the critical areas of disability and mental health.

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  Growing up radical? The role of educational institutions in guiding young people’s worldview construction

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  Impact Analysis of Applications to the Oxford Martin School

  This in-depth case study explored the ways in which research impact had been conceptualised and operationalised by recipents of the Oxford Martin School's research funding over the last decade.

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  Pedagogic and organisational mediation of experience in schools

  This study investigates the extent to which feeling safe, secure, respected and part of a school community are related to attendance and participation in Oxfordshire secondary schools.

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  Educational Attainment and Progress of Children in Need and Children in Care

  This study investigates the educational trajectories, attainments and experiences of children in care and in need, including the perspectives of parents, pupils and professionals.

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  Shared Training and Assessment for well-being (STRAWB)

  A pilot project testing a training and assessment package to be used by foster carers and schools to improve early identification of potential mental health difficulties in children.

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  Early Years Evaluation Partnership

  The University is working in partnership with the local authority early years team, providing ongoing evaluation of local quality improvement projects.

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  Strategic School Improvement Fund

  These combined projects involve evaluation of area-based school improvement projects funded under the Department for Education’s Strategic School Improvement Fund (SSIF).

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  Empowering Staff to Enhance oral language in the early years

  This project aims to improve outcomes for disadvantaged young children by supporting early years practitioners to offer high-quality language-learning environments.

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  Engaging parents in their young children’s learning: The Parental Engagement Fund project

  The Parental Engagement Fund is a project supported by five organisations to implement and evaluate projects aimed at engaging parents in their children’s learning.

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  Intelligent support to improve health care training in the developing world

  This project aims to develop intelligent mobile training applications for health care practitioners in the developing world.

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  LIFE: Life-saving Instruction for Emergencies

  A social enterprise project providing mobile and VR simulation training apps for healthcare workers, equipping them to save lives and reduce disability, wherever they are in the world.

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  Foreign Language Education: Unlocking Reading

  An experimental study investigating the effects of three different approaches to teaching reading to beginner learners of French in Year 7.

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  Evaluation of Maths Champions

  This project evaluated the Maths Champions professional development programme, designed to support early years practitioners to improve children’s mathematical skills.

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  Using Research Tools to Improve Language in the Early Years

  This project is developing and evaluating a professional development programme, designed to support early years practitioners to improve young children’s oral language skills.

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  International Early Learning and Child Well-being study

  This study will explore international measures of child development in language, numeracy, self-regulation, social, emotional, trust and empathy for 5 year olds across 3 pilot OECD countries.

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  ISOTIS: Inclusive Education and Social Support to Tackle Inequalities in Society

  ISOTIS aims to build on the strengths of culturally and linguistically diverse families in ten European countries to create inclusive and effective education and support systems.

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  Transition from secondary education: Content and Language Integrated learning programmes (science) to tertiary education English Medium Instruction

  This cross-sectional study will measure English vocabulary knowledge (subject specific; general academic; non-academic) in two different student groups.

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  The unequal representation of ethnic minorities in Special Education in England: Extent, causes and consequences

  The project will compare and determine the identification of special educational needs of some ethnic minorities and White British pupils, with consideration to demographic variables.

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  English as an Additional Language, Proficiency in English and pupils’ educational achievement

  This project will determine the link between EAL pupils’ proficiency in English and their educational achievement and explore how long it takes pupil’s to acquire proficiency in English over time.

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  Exploring doctoral education in Commonwealth Africa

  This collaborative project is investigating new approaches to doctoral training that are adapted to the needs of African educators and academics.

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  Rethinking Capacity Building: Ethnographic portraits of East African sciences

  This project explores the experiences and trajectories of East African doctoral students in transnational research collaborations using biographical portraits.

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  Apprenticeships: Who Pays and Who Trains

  Apprenticeship plays an important role in supporting young people in the transition between school and work. This project aims to compare participation in apprenticeship globally.

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  The Marketization of Further Education in England

  This project explored the leadership responses of English Further Education Colleges to the marketisation of FE funding.

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  Understanding the CREATE Framework in Studio Schools

  This project aims to understand the use of the CREATE employability framework in Studio Schools through the perspective of different stakeholders and with the intention of disseminating good practice

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  Knowledge for liberation? The participatory vision of Freire, Fals-Borda, and Rahman

  A comparative collective biography of Paulo Freire, Orlando Fals-Borda, and Muhammad Anisur Rahman, three influential scholar-activist-educators of the Global South.

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  Pilot study to evaluate an integrated phonics and language programme for the teaching of reading to deaf and hearing children

  This project will examine the effects of a fully integrated phonics and language whole-class approach to teaching reading in a sample of children, some of whom will be deaf.

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  A language and reading intervention programme for Chile

  This project involves a randomised trial investigating the effectiveness of a combined reading and language intervention for children from a disadvantaged population living on a remote Chilean island

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  Argumentation in Religion and Science

  The aim of this project is to understand how argumentation works in science and religion, both in terms of the nature and development of arguments, and also in terms of teaching and learning.

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  Language and Literacy Learning in the Akshara-based Languages of India

  This seven year project examines children's reading and spelling in the Ashara-based regions of India.

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  Progress in International Reading Literacy (PIRLS) 2016 Assessment

  Advising on the development of the assessment items and survey instruments of PIRLS 2016.

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  Reading Together: Effectiveness of an Enhanced Book-Gifting Intervention

  A reading programme, co-designed with Queen’s University Belfast for children aged 7-9 in foster care using an approach called 'paired reading'.

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  Improving Children’s Working Memory

  A project utilising a working memory intervention to improve the working memory of hearing and deaf children through attainment in maths.

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  Evaluation of Maths Reasoning

  Evaluation of the effectiveness and potential scalability of Mathematical Reasoning; a programme developing children’s understanding of numbers and quantitative reasoning.

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  Study of Early Education and Development

  A project exploring the current childcare and early education model in England.

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  Evaluation of the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘Fulfilling Lives: A Better Start’ programme

  Investigating the educational aspect and effects of the 'A Better Start' programme with particular attention to the foundational skills children need for a successful start to school.

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  Programme Lead: Raising Learning Outcomes in Education Systems in Developing Countries

  A role supporting and providing evidence of the scientific, conceptual, and methodological contributions of the ESRC and Department for International Development's international research programme.

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  Education and Uncertainty

  Research into the impact of political uncertainty on education, theoretically and empirically.

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  Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme (DfE)

  We are developing and delivering evaluations for seven of the UK-based projects funded by the UK government's DfE Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme.

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  Disparities in rates of permanent exclusion from school across the UK

  An interdisciplinary project examining accounts of permanent exclusion from schools in UK and the impacts exclusion policies have on young peoples' lives.

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  Evaluation of Siblings Together Buddy Project

  A mixed methods evaluation of the Buddy project run by the charity Siblings Together.

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  Supporting mental health of looked after children around primary-secondary transition

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  Evaluation London Fostering Achievement Programme

  A mixed methods evaluation of a programme that is designed to improve educational outcomes for fostered children in London.

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  Research Reviews

  A series of reviews by the Rees Centre that examine existing research evidence on topics related to foster care and education.

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  Enhancing Summative Assessment of Practical Science Skills at GCSE

  A project addressing how practical science can be better assessed at GCSE.

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  The Nuffield Nursery Language Programme

  This project aims to develop a preschool language programme to ameliorate the language weaknesses seen in disadvantaged groups at school entry.

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  Effectiveness Trial of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention Effectiveness Programme

  An effectiveness trial of a 20 week programme to improve children’s oral language skills and supports reading comprehension in primary schools

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  Understanding NEETs: Individual and institutional determinants of youth inactivity in France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the UK

  This project aims to investigate the patterns, causes and consequences of NEET (Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training) across five different countries.

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  Evaluation of Edge Hill University’s 1stClass@Number; a Mathematics Intervention for Children in Year 1

  The evaluation of an intervention designed for children who are struggling with Key Stage 1 Maths.

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  Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) Video Study

  A project using teaching and learning research to inform and improve teaching practice.

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  Evaluation of the University of Nottingham’s onebillion Mathematics Intervention

  This project explores the effectiveness of self-teaching mathematics apps in Year 1 pupils.

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  eCraft2Learn

  eCraft2Learn is an integrated learning ecosystem that provides tools, support and training for innovative learning in STEAM education.

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  GoGirl: Code and Create

  Go_Girl is a coding project for young women from non-traditional educational backgrounds.

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  Young-beginner learners: the relationship between decoding ability and motivation

  This study examined the relationships between decoding ability in French as a foreign language, specifically self-efficacy and attribution among young-beginner learners in England.

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  Young-beginner learners: an intervention into reading and writing skills and strategies

  This was an intervention study of reading comprehension among young-beginner learners of French as a foreign language (L2) in England.