Southampton Education School achieves outstanding impact results in the REF 2014

Southampton Education School was ranked 7th best from 76 education departments in the UK for its research impact, just behind the University of Oxford (in 5th position) and ahead of UCL Institute of Education (10th), and the University of Cambridge (11th).

The School was also ranked 7th for the most important metric, research intensity, which takes account of the percentage of staff submitted as well as the excellence of the research done at the school. University of Oxford was ranked 1st in this category, the UCL Institute of Education 16th, and University of Cambridge 26th.

The School has a mature culture of engagement with policy, practice and public audiences. Our research is designed to improve learning outcomes for children and adults, and to enhance social and economic life chances and well-being. We seek to maximise the validity and impact of our research by actively engaging non-academic beneficiaries in its design, implementation and interpretation. The four main user groups for our work are:

1. Schools and those with a stake in schools: Our research on educational improvement and effectiveness has impacted (and is impacting) on how schools work in partnership, how they use data to improve pupil outcomes, on teacher development and on the responses of schools to diversity issues. Our research on mathematics education, pedagogy and curriculum has influenced (and is influencing) Initial Teacher Education and teaching practice through the take-up of special research-designed textbooks and resources for teachers in the UK, China and Singapore. And our research on science education has led (and is leading) to successful collaborations with bio-medical and pharmaceutical companies through our Science Learning Centre, which creates hugely successful training resources and CPD for science teachers across the South of England. Most of our stakeholder research relationships include a ‘school improvement’ element.

2. School leavers, university students and graduates: Our research on vocational education and apprenticeship has impacted (and is impacting) on how young people are prepared for (and how they access) the labour market. It has supported (and is supporting) training providers and employers to improve the quality of apprenticeships, training and workplace learning. Our research on transitions into, through and from university is achieving impact on widening participation and student engagement strategies. Research on lifelong learning and education-to-work transitions is also benefiting public organisations like the British armed forces through formal contracts of career progression to educational attainment.

3. People who are vulnerable to poor physical health, well-being and quality of life: Our research has involved people with disabilities in the design and implementation of projects and our research has focused on delivering practical solutions to: enhancing quality of life, communication and emotional well-being through, for example, ‘Intensive Interaction’; improving educational engagement through the innovative use of technology; and helping young people and their families make informed choices about health, diet and lifestyle.

4. Government departments, inter-governmental and non-governmental agencies and charitable organisations: Our researchers have been engaged by leading policy-makers as school improvement consultants. They work in partnership with voluntary organisations like the Fisher Family Trust, CfBT Education Trust and Jersey Community Relations Trust, and our work with organisations like the Autism Education Trust and ‘Us in a Bus’ are helping to find new ways for research to reach beneficiaries and impact meaningfully on their lives and outcomes.

What is our Impact strategy?

Our impact strategy focuses on identifying and forging close relationships with relevant policy and practitioner communities and actively encouraging staff to undertake policy-leading and/or practice-leading research with the aim of advancing knowledge and effecting change. Our conviction that educational research should improve learner outcomes and individual life chances, and address societal and economic problems, lies at the heart of our impact strategy. Our key objectives as far as impact is concerned are:

• to strengthen our external collaborative partnerships within a culture that facilitates and celebrates impact-producing activity.
• to consolidate our research partnerships with primary and secondary schools and FE colleges, and expand our initiatives to spark interests in science within the UK and in Europe and Asia.
• to engage research users at the earliest opportunity in the research process for timely feedback from potential users and generating demand for our research findings.
• to strengthen our communication and social media strategies targeting a wide range of users to maximise utilisation of the research findings.

Some examples of our research below and you can read about further work in our research impact brochure, ‘Advancing knowledge, effecting change’:

 

 

Direct engagement with teachers in Science and Mathematics Education

Based on extensive research evidence about ways to engage teenagers on issues about their health and well-being, the work of our science education research team is informing teachers’ professional development through Lifelab and the School of Education’s Math & Science Learning Centre. Scores of secondary schools in the region have benefited from professional training and development linked to Lifelab alone, and through our EU-funded Pri Sci Net project, and scores of primary teachers across the region are being trained in inquiry-based science education supported by a range of activities undertaken at Southampton General Hospital and at the University of Southampton Education School.

Direct engagement with vulnerable young people

Our recent ESRC-funded research with special schools shows how direct engagement with vulnerable young people and practitioners can have a national and international impact on the practice of professionals who teach people with severe learning disabilities. Our work produced a transferable, robust, holistic educational model for teenage girls with complex special educational needs related to behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. It was awarded Grade A (‘Outstanding’) by the Technology Strategy Board. The outcomes included: improvements to the company’s operations through the introduction of an integrated curriculum, which resulted in significantly improved engagement of the students and a consequent reduction in behavioural incidents; a web portal for disseminating the model enabling engagement with a wider audience; significantly improved visibility of the school and its achievements through an art exhibition at an art centre in the South of England.


Direct engagement with professional services and practitioners in School Improvement and Effectiveness

Our collaborative research with local councils and sixth-form colleges demonstrates how our direct engagement has had a demonstrable policy impact in the UK and internationally regarding the effects of (and practice within) ‘good’ schools and has pioneered novel approaches to school improvement, school organisation and the use of data in schools. For example, our work has shown that inter-school networks and collaborations make a difference to school performance and that pupil outcomes improve in schools that are part of a network, especially when high- and low-performing schools work together. This has led these partnerships to refine their partnership work in focusing on pupil outcomes. Our development of new quantitative metrics and ways of interpreting / using school attainment and progression data are being used to improve school performance.

To find out more about our impact case studies visit our impact web pages. You can also read Head of Southampton Education School, Professor Anthony Kelly's reflections on the influence ‘impact’ had on the 2014 REF results in his 'Conversation' article 'The impact of 'impact on the REF'.

For the University of Southampton’s complete results visit the REF 2014 website.