IOE Insights

The IOE has launched the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO), focusing on equalising opportunities across the life course. CEPEO's work seeks ways to improve education policy and wider employment practices to achieve this goal. In the first episode of their podcast, Research Fellow Dr Sam Sims discusses his research on improving teacher effectiveness in science. Learn...

Since the 2016 EU Referendum, two narratives have been prominent in the public debate surrounding the outcome of the vote. The first narrative sees Brexit as a revolt of the ‘economically left-behinds’, while the second narrative attributes Brexit to the resurgence of an English nationalism. In this lecture, Tak Wing Chan uses data from a large scale and nationally representative survey to evaluat...

Peter Tabichi is a science teacher and Franciscan Brother who gives away 80% of his monthly income to help the poor. Thanks to Peter's dedication, hard work and passionate belief in his students, his poorly-resourced school in remote rural Kenya is now winning national and international science competitions. Peter was awarded the 2019 Global Teacher Prize, a $US1 million award from the Varkey Foun...

For a long time, the ‘grand narrative’ in education and social policy has been the pursuit of social mobility – breaking the link between an individual’s background and where they get to in life. Over the past year, the political rhetoric has changed, with the emergence of the cause of social justice as the new proposed guiding principle for public policy choices. But there’s been a certain ‘fuzzi...

Professor Becky Francis, Dr Becky Taylor and Dr Antonina Tereshchenko examine research from the Best practice in grouping students project. Their book, ‘Reassessing 'Ability' Grouping: Improving Practice for Equity and Attainment’ looks at wider political debates on pupils' social backgrounds and educational attainment. Its chapters discuss the practicalities of classroom practice, and recommend i...

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a major international study of the reading, mathematics and science skills of 15-year-olds across the world. The results are closely watched by journalists, educationalists and policymakers across the globe. Yet there have been recent criticisms of the methodology used by PISA, and debate about whether the results can really be trus...

A lecture by Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Carl Wieman, Stanford University that took place on Wednesday 25 September 2019 at UCL Institute of Education (IOE). About the lecture: Guided by experimental tests of theory and practice, science and engineering has advanced rapidly in the past 500 years. Guided primarily by tradition and dogma, science education meanwhile has remained largely medieval....

From the archives: in 2011 Vivian Hill spoke about the contemporary issues affecting educational psychology and disadvantaged and disabled children, focusing on her work and research with supporting inclusive learning environments in schools for children. Vivian also discusses research that finds conceptual differences in the way children on the autism spectrum view friendships compared to their p...

From the archives: in 2011, Professor Michael Reiss spoke to the IOE about his interest in science education research, sex education and bio-ethics. He's in conversation with Tamjid Mujtaba, who is now a Senior Research Associate and happens to work alongside Professor Reiss here at the IOE. The pair discuss why many students appear to lose interest in studying science after leaving school. #weare...

From the archives: in 2011, Dominic Wyse, Professor of Early Childhood and Primary Education, joined IOE alumna Melissa Beeko for a conversation about his research interests, which include the understanding of literacy and language in early years and primary. #weareioe #UCLminds

From the archives: Ann Phoenix, Professor of Psychosocial Studies spoke to the IOE about her research interests, which include motherhood, social identities, young people, radicalisation and gender. Professor Phoenix is joined by Catherine Walker, who at the time was a PhD candidate, and is now a Research Associate at the Sustainable Consumption Institute. The pair discuss inequalities, education...

From the archives: Elaine Unterhalter, Professor of Education and International Development spoke to the IOE about her research into gender, education and poverty. She's joined by Kate Greany, who is currently the Head of Economic Development in Kenya for the UK government's Department for International Development. #weareioe #UCLminds

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...