Educational research in the UK - Memorandum for WERA (British Educational Research Association (BERA), United Kingdom)

• In Event: Worldwide Education Research Priorities and Collaborative Opportunities from the Vantage of Education Research Associations

Abstract

The overall context in the UK is a time of crisis, for higher education generally and for capacity in educational research in particular. British higher education is in the midst of an unprecedented funding crisis. After a period of significant expansion following the stated aim of the Blair government to see over 50% of young people go into higher education the sector has begun to contract. The capping of tuition fees for UK students and the political impulse not to increase them even in line with inflation, UK universities have grown increasingly reliant upon income from overseas students. In recent years this has taken a significant hit due to a number of factors – in part the pandemic, the negative impacts of Brexit and global uncertainty but also due to the policies of the current Westminster government to place severe restrictions upon foreign students as part of its drive to reduce immigration numbers. Earlier this year, overseas students were prohibited from bringing family members with them while on their studies . All this is ensuring that universities are in a major financial crisis. At the time of writing, 36 UK universities have so far announced plans to make redundancies and in some cases whole departments are closing .

Educational research is vulnerable in this climate. Despite education being the second largest area of public spending after healthcare, the money spent on educational research is a tiny proportion of public expenditure on education (less than one twentieth of 1%) and that investment is falling even as that across the social sciences as a whole is increasing . BERA has recently completed a major initiative - Education: The State of the Discipline – the outcomes of which offer a comprehensive account of the state of education, as an academic discipline and as a field of practice. Alongside some of the difficulties outlined above, the studies also showed that there has been a deterioration in working conditions for the majority of education researchers over time . Excessive workload for education researchers has become a much more serious problem. Analysis of education staffing in UK universities also revealed significant problems with diversity. Those working in education departments in universities, particularly at the most senior levels, are not representative of the groups in wider society. Although education has more female than male staff, the male staff were advantaged particularly as a proportion in senior positions. Furthermore, the proportion of those education staff recorded as BAME in 2020 was, in comparison, less than half that of the UK HE sector as a whole. Despite these severely challenging contexts, there is much to be positive about in the quality of educational research. The outcomes from the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF) show evidence of improvement in education research particularly in terms of research impact and research outputs. Since the last exercise in 2014, the overall quality profile rose, from 66% to 72% of research outputs being in the top two categories and those judges as having outstanding impact rose from 42.9% to 51.1%. Education also helps more students complete doctorates (per full time equivalent staff submitted to REF) than other comparable disciplines.

Another of the identified strengths is the expertise of researchers in a wide range of methodological approaches and research methods. The best of this expertise reflects the discipline’s maturity of thinking about methodology including the importance of selecting research methods that are the most appropriate in relation to a given set of research questions. The breadth of thinking is also marked by disagreement, sometimes over very long-standing issues, such as contestation about the merits of qualitative methods vs quantitative methods, and the intersections of these methods with government policies. Education in UK universities has a higher proportion of staff on permanent contracts compared to the UK Higher Education (HE) sector generally . The stability of permanent contracts provides a firm foundation for longer term work to sustain the discipline. However, there is a clear distinction between those on ‘teaching only’, ‘research only’ and ‘research and teaching’ contracts, a distinction that matters in terms of equity and opportunities to carry out research, and the value that universities attribute to teaching excellence compared to research excellence. The diversity of the research environment makes it hard to identify clear areas of focus but some consistent ones in terms of submission to BERA journals and conference papers are:
• The impact of digital technologies
• The future scope and nature of initial and ongoing teacher education
• A focus on evidenced-based practice
• Interdisciplinary collaboration
• Addressing equity and inclusion

Author

• Mhairi Catherine Beaton, Leeds Beckett University