Research
The Faculty of Education at Cambridge University provides an outstanding environment for educational research by virtue of:
- Its active strategy to promote innovative and effective research activity.
- The quality of its staff and students and their research achievements.
- The research facilities, scholarly resources, academic organisation, and developmental opportunities provided by University and Faculty.
- The size, breadth and interdisciplinarity of the Faculty research community.
- Its productive national and international collaborations with other researchers, professional groups and research users.
Highlights of the substantive development of research environment in the period since 2001 include:
- Established excellence in social research has been extended, through outstanding appointments, to encompass economic development and educational inclusion.
- A new, highly innovative programme of research on educational neuroscience and psychology has been established under exceptional leadership.
- The Faculty has become a leader in research on the educational integration of new technologies, notably in school science and mathematics.
- Established areas of research in primary and secondary education, language education, children's literature, literacy, creative arts and cultural studies have been enriched by greater opportunities for collaboration and scholarly interaction
- Outstanding traditions of school improvement research have been renewed through influential work on student voice, leadership for learning, and the dynamics of change.
The broad areas in which the Faculty is active in research are shown by its five academic groups:
- Education, Equality and Development: historical contexts and contemporary practice
- Leading Learning for School Improvement
- Pedagogy, Language, Arts and Culture in Education
- Psychology and Neuroscience in Education
- Science, Technology & Mathematics Education
These groups bring together academic staff, research students and visiting researchers with cognate interests to address a wide range of educational issues. Their members undertake a wide range of research projects.
The Faculty resources initiatives aimed at promoting research activity and building research capacity. Significant Faculty-wide events include CamERA, an annual day-conference showcasing research across the Faculty, attended by most staff and doctoral students. The Research Committee also supports more specialised research seminars and conferences organised by the Academic Groups. In addition, a Research Development Fund supports small-scale peer reviewed projects and The Transforming Practice Research Programme (TPRP) will be funding up to 5 larger-scale projects over the next 3 years.
The Faculty's Research Office provides support to the research community. Staff of the Faculty can access resources provided by the Research office on our Local Information pages.