Research

The School of Education at Nottingham is a leading centre for research in education, with a broad commitment to improving and investigating social justice and equality in education. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) we were ranked 6th out of 82 Education departments in the UK.

We are committed to working with others to improve education and its contribution to society. This research covers a range of aspects of education, including improved design of mathematics education; teachers’ lives and work; educational leadership; creative pedagogies; higher education pedagogies; and international education policies. Our desire to make learning more empowering inspires partnerships with a range of external organisations, including local schools, the British Film Institute and UNESCO.

We also see The University itself as a site of research. Our focus on educating future professionals has led to research collaboration with colleagues in Engineering and Health. Our interests in the transformative potential of new technologies have resulted in joint work across a range of disciplines. Our concerns with the future of the University as a vital social institution has led to support for a large number of practitioner research projects from administrators across the University as part of the School’s postgraduate programmes.

We also undertake innovative inter-disciplinary research in collaboration with colleagues in the University’s social science priority research themes, Integrating Global Society and Science, Technology and Society, and the Centre for Advanced Studies. Staff are also members of other university networks and centres such as the Child and Childhood Network, the China Policy Institute, the Centre for Trauma, Resilience and Growth, and the Identity, Citizenship and Migration Centre.

We are also home to more than 300 doctoral students in PhD and EdD programmes, who contribute much to the vibrancy of the School as a community and as a research organisation.

We believe that educational research must be done in partnership with a range of other stakeholders and are committed to research that makes a difference through external engagement through all phases of activities and through multiple modes of communication and dissemination.

Professor Simon McGrath
Director of Research