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Research Programmes

African girls sit at desks in a school classroom

Research Programmes and Interdisciplinary Research

Interdisciplinary research

The major challenges in education are interdisciplinary: ranging from the need to address the rising prevalence of poor mental health among children and young people, to global inequalities in educational outcomes. In response to this, the Faculty encourages interdisciplinary collaborations both across the Faculty itself, and across the University of Cambridge.

Many of our researchers are engaged with University Strategic Research Initiatives, Networks, and Interdisciplinary Research Centres, often in leadership roles. Among many others, these include:



Our research programmes

School children stand looking at something on a tablet computer
(Photo: EdTEch Hub)

EdTech Research and Innovation Hub

The EdTech Hub is a £20m+ programme on research and innovation in technology for education, funded by the UK Department for International Development, in partnership with the World Bank and others. It seeks to advance knowledge and practice through research, innovation, and engagement.

Read more about the EdTech Hub


A group of primary school children working together at a table
(Photo: T-SEDA)

Teacher Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (T-SEDA)

Our recent large-scale ESRC-funded project encouragingly demonstrated that certain features of whole-class dialogue are strongly linked to student learning and positive attitudinal outcomes. This significant finding calls for widespread teacher professional development to promote this practice.

Read more about T-SEDA


A primary school pupil reads an open book to other children
(Photo: DIALLS)

Dialogue and Argumentation for Cultural Literacy Learning in Schools (DIALLS)

DIALLS (2018-2021) is a European-funded project led by Fiona Maine, that has focused on teaching children in primary and secondary schools the dialogue skills needed to engage together with tolerance, empathy and inclusion; central dispositions to becoming culturally literate. The project has developed freely available materials include a Teacher Resource Bank and Multi-lingual Corpus for researchers.

Read more about DIALLS


A group of school boys showing things they have made
(Photo: MEITS)

Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS)

MEITS is a major interdisciplinary research project funded under the AHRC Open World Research Initiative. Linguistic competence in more than one language – being multilingual – sits at the heart of the study of modern languages and literatures, distinguishing it from cognate disciplines.

Read more about MEITS


Two secondary school girls with protective glasses are soldering
(Photo: Designing Our Tomorrow)

Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT)

The Faculty of Education and the Engineering Department started collaborating in 2009 bringing together two long-term, world-class areas of research in inclusive design and creativity in education. This led to an initial EPSRC funded project called Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) in conjunction with Loughborough University and the Royal College of Art who were partners in the inclusive design research through the i-design programme.

Read more about DOT


Current and recently-completed research projects

Current and recently-completed research projects are listed here. The projects are listed chronologically, with the most recently-funded first. The list includes:

  • Externally-funded projects
  • Personal Research Fellowships
  • Projects internally-funded through the transforming Practice Research Programme

Research Programmes