IOE Insights

Between challenges like climate despair and alternative climate facts, how can education give young people a fuller understanding of the scale and significance of critical climate change? With a PhD in glaciology and a background in geography education, Professor Nicola Walshe can attest to why Geography as a subject is well-placed to engage in the interdisciplinary nature of environmental and sus...

With beginnings in the study of Classics, becoming a teacher, Master’s research in Northern Tanzania at a Massai school, Dr Charlotte Nussey brings a unique set of experiences to each of the research projects she is heavily involved in. Climate change has always played a key part in her research focus on education and intersecting inequalities. Dr Keri Wong hears about how the UN’s Sustainable Dev...

Climate change is bringing about ever-increasing, intense and catastrophic weather events and other ecological disasters. A key challenge is for communities to be able to act quickly and decisively when they happen. Dr Kaori Kitagawa joins us from Japan to discuss her research area of community learning for disaster preparedness. At present, the involvement of the field of education has been limit...

Climate change affects all of us, but some more than others. What can universities do, particularly in countries seen as highly vulnerable to extreme weather events and threats? As the principal investigator for the Transforming Universities for a Changing Climate research project (Climate-U for short), Professor Tristan McCowan is working with teams in Brazil, Fiji, Kenya and Mozambique to streng...

[Preview] We know it's real. What are we going to do about it? This season of Research for the Real World hears from experts and the challenge of enabling education into action. Dr Kaori Kitagawa on preparing communities for ecological disasters, Professor Nicola Walshe on practice for environment and sustainability education, climate change awareness and empowering young people, Dr Charlotte Nuss...

This episode features a story of change. Xiaoyu, an Applied Linguistics Master's student from the IOE, shares how she took the initiative to create her own unique university experience since she came to London in March 2020, in the middle of the UK's first lockdown.  In addition to some common hurdles faced by international students, including socialising and adapting to living and working in a di...

Professor Allison Littlejohn (Professor and Director of the UCL Knowledge Lab, IOE) joins this podcast discussing knowledge, skills and jobs in a future London. How has the pandemic affected education, and what lessons can we take from it in the future? How can we continue to attract and retain talent in an era of virtual working, and how will increasing digitisation augment learning and social ju...

As the Covid-19 pandemic has progressed, mounting evidence has highlighted its marked impact on children and young people’s mental health. We discuss how families and schools can support young people’s social and emotional wellbeing, to smooth the transition and help them with the continued changes and uncertainties in their daily lives. This #IOECoffeeBreaks event was held on 22 June 2021. More e...

Last year schools and families navigated lockdown restrictions and social distancing and learned some things about how to best support children moving up from primary to secondary school, get to grips with new routines, curricula, and ways of teaching and learning. #IOECoffeeBreaks host Dr Sandra Leaton-Gray, joined by Professor Eleanore Hargreaves and Dr Jane Perryman, shares insights from resear...

Vivienne Parry talks to Professor Francois Balloux (Chair in Computational Systems Biology and Chair of the UCL Genetics Institute) and Dr Keri Wong (Assistant Professor in Psychology in the IOE's Department of Psychology and Human Development) about the lockdown extension, a potential third wave here in the UK and what this means for us mentally and physically. Transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/u...

Mental health is complex, and improving it is an increasingly multidisciplinary goal. In this podcast we talk to an award-winning researcher about thinking and working outside your disciplinary boundary. Dr Praveetha Patalay puts forward the case for why the mental health field needs to utilise multidisciplinary perspectives to have a hope of finding impactful solutions. We also hear how Praveetha...

As the mental health of young people continues to be a very pressing issue, we hear about support teams being placed in schools to address pupils’ needs. Can the same be rolled out more widely across the education sector? Vivian introduces a feasibility study involving colleagues from the IOE, other UCL faculties and the Anna Freud Centre mental health charity looking into the implementation of Me...

With schools focused on ‘catch up’, could the arts be further marginalised, and at a time when young people may have greater need for the benefits that arts subjects provide? We've gathered Ed Dorrell (Public First), primary art specialist Emily Gopaul, 2018 Global Teacher Prize Winner Andria Zafirakou, Isobel Traunter and Professor Dominic Wyse (UCL Institute of Education) to talk about arts educ...

The ability for young people to access Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics learning opportunities can be quite limiting. Here’s how IOE researchers are collaborating with others to break down barriers and ramp up representation. The YESTEM (Youth Equity + STEM) project brings together researchers and practitioners in the UK and US to develop an integrated approach centred on “Justice...

Girls’ education is a key focus for the G7 this year. This event explores an innovative framework for measuring gender equality in education, as well as the politics of steering between the complex relationships described by social research on gender and girls’ education and the clarity on data needed for public policy. The Accountability for Gender Equality in Education (AGEE) framework provides...

Our ability to communicate through the sense of touch has never been more important, as groundbreaking work takes place to make touch a reality digitally. We also hear about how UCL researchers are reaching beyond their own fields of expertise to make this and other innovations possible. Professor Carey Jewitt leads the IN-TOUCH project exploring how the digital is reshaping touch as human communi...

Is the GCSE system intrinsically flawed, or simply a victim of the high-stakes accountability system in which it sits? If it really has no benefits to offer, what could its demise offer to young people’s education? Full event information: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2021/apr/virtual-event-what-if-we-got-rid-gcses #IOEDebates In association with tes

We're delighted to be between your ears for the 10th season of the IOE's podcast about education and social science research and its impact on policy, practice and our everyday lives. This season focuses on how IOE researchers are finding opportunities to extend the impact of their work through collaboration with colleagues at UCL and beyond. Listen to a sneak preview of Dr Sam Sims' and Dr Keri W...

How people are regaining their voice after their voice boxes are removed, through the beatboxing project Shout at Cancer; how a group of LGBTQ + refugees in Brazil are using film to tell their stories; and how health students and advocates are sharing the impact of their work through poetry. This episode is reposted from the #MadeAtUCL podcast Season 2, Episode 2. It is presented by Cassidy Martin...

Dr Will Brehm considers his teaching and podcasting to be important parts of his academic life, and issued himself a challenge. “Why couldn’t I infuse my teaching practice with podcast pedagogies? Why couldn’t I utilise the medium of sound and audio to enrich the study of education and international development?” In an effort to democratise and empower others to get involved in knowledge productio...

Play can mean everything, and sometimes nothing at all – and that’s ok. Professor John Potter credits his early career as an East London primary school teacher as a key influence in his research interest in digital media and play. It’s in no way a surprise for RFTRW host Dr Keri Wong to hear that play connects to children’s lives in a way that the statutory curriculum doesn’t. We think about how T...

Coming from a part of the world where speaking multiple languages is part of life, multilingualism has always been an area of study that’s close to home for Dr Ruanni Tupas. Ruanni joins Dr Keri Wong to discuss how getting to know the lived realities of students and teachers shapes his research and help reconcile academic theorisation with the messiness of the classroom. We hear about how, in mult...

The gap in levels of attainment between pupils from disadvantaged and more advantaged backgrounds is a longstanding feature of England’s schools system. It’s been a focus for successive governments, from New Labour’s efforts to ‘narrow’ the gap, and subsequent Coalition and Conservative governments’ objective to ‘close’ it. According to DfE data, some (modest) progress had been made, but even befo...

Dr Zsófia Demjén and Dr Talia Isaacs join Dr Sam Sims to talk about their research examining key issues and concerns in healthcare communication. You may have noticed particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic the use of military-style words - the frontline, battlegrounds, arsenal - Dr Demjén and Dr Isaacs’ work on the way language is used by cancer patients and the community at large speaks loudly...

Professor Chloë Marshall drops into the Research for the Real World virtual studio to talk to Dr Sam Sims about her work focusing on language development in deaf children and in particular, sign language development. We hear about the challenges in diagnosing developmental delays among deaf children, the creation of a toolkit to aid awareness for teachers and education professionals, the relations...