IOE Insights

The IOE was saddened to hear of the passing of Gunther Kress, Professor of Semiotics and Education, on 20 June 2019. A widely regarded academic, linguist, semiotician and social theorist, Professor Kress was a pioneer of critical linguistics, critical discourse analysis, and social semiotics. In this 2011 interview, Professor Kress spoke about the kind of role semiotics and education can play when...

IOE Professorial Lecture: Speaker: Professor Douglas Bourn is Co-Director of the Development Education Research Centre (DERC), IOE Lecture respondent: Dr Mary Stiasny, Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) and Chief Executive of University of London Worldwide. Chair: Professor Becky Francis, Director, IOE The relationship between learning and social change has been a repeated theme in the work of le...

IOE Professorial Public Lecture: In recent years ideas about education have polarised: on one side are those stressing facts and disciplines; on the other, those committed to the encouragement of learners to make their own meaning. By offering a fine-grained account of pedagogic practice and subject knowledge, recent developments in philosophy provide a means of reconfiguring the issue in a manner...

IOE Professorial Public Lecture: In this lecture Professor Alissa Goodman will talk about her research on inequalities, showing how both cross-sectional and longitudinal data are being used to illuminate and address some of the major social and policy questions of our time. Speakers include: Alissa Goodman, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies in the IOE's Dep...

IOE Professorial Public Lecture: Speaker: Professor Alice Sullivan, IOE Chair: Professor Becky Francis, Director, IOE Respondent: Professor Heather Joshi, IOE In this public lecture Professor Alice Sullivan talks about social class and gender differences in educational attainment and social mobility. She addresses the roles of children's home backgrounds and their schooling, and explains the impor...

IOE Public Debates: The early years have now got the recognition they deserve as a pivotal stage in our lives. It’s one that lasts a lifetime – setting us up, or not, to face the joys, but also the challenges, trials and tribulations to come. With that recognition has come a whole host of initiatives, from, in England, the Early Years Foundation Stage, to interventions on the ‘home learning enviro...

IOE Professorial Public Lecture: Why are educational inequalities so powerful and resistant to change? And how might they be challenged? This talk explores how systemic injustices marginalise, oppress and exclude young people through formal and informal educational systems and settings. About the Speaker Professor Louise Archer at the Department of Education, Practice and Society, UCL Institute of...

IOE Public Debates: Is “comprehensivisation” the answer to the slow pace of progress in widening access to the most prestigious universities, or can we improve our current structures to ensure that all young people have the opportunity to study at a university that matches their talents and aspirations? Speakers included: •Nick Hillman, Director, Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) •Anna Vign...

IOE Public Debates: Could we hold a mirror up to teaching practice and school performance, and support their improvement, more effectively than we do now? What might that look like if we started from a blank page? The way in which schools are held to account in England, based in inspection and performance indicators that lead off from regular high-stakes testing of pupils, is highly contentious. T...

IOE Public Debates: The majority view would appear to be that building pupils’ subject knowledge is vital but that there is also room for paying attention to skills and other aspects of young people’s development. The more nuanced question seems to be what kind of curricular diet – and associated pedagogy and assessment – will best develop young people’s wisdom, which is surely our main goal. In t...

2018 Global Teacher Prize Lecture. Art at the heart of education: why you cannot be truly educated without the arts, and why their decline affects us all - Andria Zafirakou, MBE To experience the arts is to experience aspects of humanity which cannot easily be defined or understood in another context. In whatever medium it comes, the importance of ensuring young people have – to coin a phrase – ac...

IOE Public Debates: What are Key Stage tests and national exams for – to support learning, certify competence, or sort pupils by ability? One answer is ‘all of the above’. But can our assessment system realistically do all of these things, simultaneously? There is the other question of whether we need all the formal tests and exams that we currently have, the number of which continues to expand, i...

IOE Public Debates: Young people’s poor sense of well-being has hit the headlines this year, with talk of crisis and a lot of soul-searching about why so many of our children seem to be so unhappy and ill at ease these days. Thankfully, serious mental health problems remain comparatively rare and it’s important to remember that childhood and the teenage years, in particular, have always been a dif...

An occasion to mark Professor Geoff Whitty’s long-standing association with the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) – from trainee teacher to Director Emeritus. We’ll be reflecting on Geoff’s time at the IOE and his contributions to the field of sociology of education as well as looking more broadly at the limits and possibilities for realising social justice in and through education.

IOE Public Debates: We use maths in every aspect of our lives. We need numeracy at work, as citizens to make sense of economic news, as patients to understand risks, as consumers to work out the best deal; the list goes on. But it’s something that as a nation we’re not good at, and poor numeracy costs individuals and the UK dearly. And despite this, it remains acceptable to say – boast even – ‘I’m...

Rob Webster, Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants (MITA) Lead and Researcher talks about why he joined Twitter, his initial approaches to using the platform, and the professional and personal benefits. Visit our website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ioe_london Follow Rob on Twitter: https://twitter.com/maximisingTAs

IOE Public Debates: The rise of neuroscience within education, as in other spheres, has been dramatic, so much so that accusations of ‘neuro mania’ and warnings about ‘neuro myths’ have become commonplace. Are we correct to pin our hopes on this field as a means of improving learning and attainment? In this debate we bring together leading neuroscientists and educationalists to reflect on the ‘sta...

IOE Public Debates: This year the Warnock Report turns 40 years old. How far have we come and where should we go next? The Warnock Report marked a pivotal change in the provision of education for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) – encouraging these children’s inclusion in mainstream classes, and introducing the system of ‘statementing’ that set out a child’s needs an...

IOE Public Debates: There’s a lot of talk at the moment about robots and artificial intelligence and how they are bringing about a ‘fourth industrial revolution’ in which occupations and the labour market, right up to the top professions like medicine and law, will be transformed. In this context, what kind of education will young people need to prosper, and can our current curriculum and testing...

IOE Public Debates: The Warnock Report is 40 years old in 2018. The Report marked a pivotal change in the provision of education for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), but much has changed in the intervening years. Baroness Mary Warnock reflects on the report and developments since in this conversation with Rob Webster, Director of the Maximising the Impact of Teachin...

IOE Public Lectures: On Thursday 15 February 2018 the IOE hosted a public lecture by Professor Martin Doel – ‘Defining further education: does it matter?’ There is no commonly accepted definition of further education. Professor Doel argues that while this diminishes the agency of institutions and organisations classed as FE providers, seeking an all-encompassing definition is not the answer. Inste...

IOE Public Debates: Some schools have made a name for themselves in performing ‘against the odds’, their pupils chalking up impressive achievements in national tests and exams. But still there remains a link between schools’ circumstances and their performance, and some glaring geographical disparities. Breaking that link has been a focal point for education policy and many high profile organisati...

IOE Public Debates: There’s been a big push to get classroom practice shaped by evidence of ‘what works’. This has been largely inspired by advances in healthcare, where the use of research trials and national guidelines to improve patient care and outcomes is more established. But this approach has not gone uncontested in education (or health) and ‘evidence-informed practice’ is still to be firml...

Professor Martin Doel discusses the latest cabinet reshuffle and the issues surrounding the lack of definition for FE. More: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news-events/events-pub/feb-2018/defining-further-education-does-it-matter About the speaker: Professor Martin Doel joined the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) in 2016 as the first Further Education Trust for Leadership Professor of Leadership in Fur...

IOE Public Debates: How can we combat the continuous challenge surrounding teacher retention? Let’s explore how technology and best practice from other professions can be used to transform teaching. Join us in the debate. Speakers include: - Mary Bousted is the general secretary of ATL and AMiE - Jonathan Simons is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Varkey Foundation - Lucy Crehan is an In...