Faculty of Education: Results of REF 2021
Thursday 12 May
The Faculty of Education has been confirmed as one of the country’s leading departments for research in education in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF).
PGCE virtual open event – 5pm, 24 May
Wednesday 11 May
Are you thinking about training as a teacher in academic year 2022/23 – or maybe just interested in what teacher education at Cambridge is all about?
Join us on 24 May at 5pm for a virtual open event which will introduce the Cambridge PGCE. The University provides outstanding courses in both the Primary and Secondary age ranges and is renowned for its personalised, innovative and high-quality approach to teacher education. Our trainees come from a wide mix of backgrounds, places and previous educational settings – but they all share our commitment to providing excellence to the UK state maintained school sector. They are also always in high demand and many quickly go on to leadership roles as their careers develop.
Come and discover for yourself what makes the Cambridge course different by signing up for the virtual event here:
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tcO2opzwoH9P_TC4xcovgJ8DnraXYnkU2
https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tcO2opzwoH9P_TC4xcovgJ8DnraXYnkU2
We look forward to meeting you!
Academics and activists explore the role of education in the age of fake news
Monday 9 May
Two exiled Brazilian academics and the director of a powerful new documentary about media corruption will join scholars in Cambridge this month for a special event examining fake news, misinformation, and education.
Read the full story.
Read the full story.
Want more students to learn languages? Win over the parents, research suggests
Tuesday 3 May
Parents influence children’s attitudes to languages far more than their teachers or friends, research finds. This implies that efforts to reverse the national decline in language-learning need to target families as well as schools.
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Susan Robertson announced as President Elect of CIES
Thursday 21 April
Professor Susan Robertson, who is Head of the Faculty of Education, has been announced as President Elect of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). She is one of just a handful of academics from outside the United States to have been appointed to the Society’s Board in its 66-year history.
CIES is the largest and oldest of almost 50 comparative and international education societies around the world. It promotes teaching and research in comparative and international education around the world, and currently has more than 3,000 registered members from over 110 countries.
Through its work, the Society seeks to deepen understanding of a panoply of issues affecting schools, students, teachers and education administration at all levels. Its work encompasses both formal and informal education; covering primary and secondary schools, higher and further education, and lifelong learning in the process. In doing so, it addresses vital questions relating to inequalities, culture, democracy, globalisation, social and economic development and politics – among others.
Professor Robertson will hold the post of President Elect before taking up the Presidency in 2024. Her election was announced at the CIES 2022 conference, which is currently taking place in Minneapolis. The appointment means that she will join a group of elected officers who constitute the CIES Executive Committee, which is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Society’s Board and acts as an advisory group to the same.
Professor Robertson said: “CIES makes a vital contribution to research, scholarship and public knowledge in education and beyond. By bringing together researchers, analysts, students and practitioners from around the world, it develops rigorous, inter-disciplinary perspectives on education with truly global impact. It is a tremendous honour to be elected to a leadership position with such an important body and I am looking forward immensely to working with my fellow-Board members to further promote and develop its work.”
Project aims to close the postgraduate ‘offer gap’ for under-represented students
Thursday 14 April
A new collaboration involving researchers, careers specialists and inclusive recruitment organisations aims to address the ‘offer gap’ in postgraduate admissions. The term refers to a gulf in application success rates which means too few people from historically marginalised, ethnic minority backgrounds are undertaking advanced study at British universities.
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Trainee teachers made sharper assessments about learning difficulties after receiving feedback from AI
Monday 11 April
A trial in which German trainee teachers who were being taught to identify pupils with potential learning difficulties had their work ‘marked’ by artificial intelligence has found the approach significantly improved their reasoning.
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Read the full story.
Lessons from modern languages can reboot Latin learning
Thursday 7 April
A new guide calls for a rethink of how Latin is taught in universities and schools, linking outdated practices to falling student numbers. The book advocates a broader approach which draws on modern languages education, involving speaking, music, storytelling and immersive Latin teaching.
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Poorly conceived payment-on-results funding threatens to undermine education aid
Wednesday 30 March
A payment on results approach to delivering education aid, which is championed by international institutions including the World Bank, is in danger of backfiring in some of the countries it aims to help, researchers believe.
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Students taking GCSE Ancient History worry about being seen as ‘elitist’ by family and friends
Friday 4 March
The tiny minority of state-educated students who take Ancient History at GCSE worry that the subject’s exclusive reputation will brand them ‘elitist’ in the eyes of friends and relatives, research suggests.
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The Cambridge student aiming to start a ‘play and health revolution’
Friday 25 February
A Cambridge student has started a play and health initiative that she hopes will eventually grow into a ‘revolution’ in paediatric care and encourage more child-friendly, playful approaches in the field.
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Pre-primary education played ‘protective’ role against COVID learning losses in sub-Saharan Africa
Wednesday 16 February
Researchers have urged aid organisations and governments in sub-Saharan Africa to strengthen their plans for emergency pre-primary education, which evidence suggests prevented ‘alarming’ learning losses in the region during COVID school closures.
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Virgil may have the edge on English poets in helping students to love literature (even when studied in bits)
Saturday 12 February
Students who study Virgil’s Aeneid at school find it significantly more engaging than other ‘high-prestige’ literature, even though they only learn tiny fragments of the text, research suggests.
Four priorities in inclusive education for the Global Disability Summit 2022
Friday 11 February
Ahead of the 2022 Global Disability Summit and its focus on inclusive education, this article summarises some of the evidence and findings produced by the Cambridge Network for Disability and Education Research (CaNDER) since the inaugural summit in 2018.
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Read the full article
Profile: Rosemarie Frost
Thursday 10 February
Rosemarie Frost has been teaching secondary school maths for more than 35 years and, as a self-confessed ‘compulsive learner’, has continually supplemented that professional experience with a variety of academic and professional development courses. In 2020/21, she completed a part-time Masters course in Maths Education with the Faculty. Here, she explains why she chose the course, what the experience was like, and how it helped her to challenge and refine some of her ideas about what works in mathematics education.
Read the full interview
Teachers leading global drive to improve girls’ education became frontline workers during COVID-19 closures
Friday 4 February
Interviews with teachers at the forefront of international efforts to improve girls’ education reveal that many have taken on humanitarian roles, as well as working as educators, during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Poor fidelity may mean effective education strategies never see light of day
Friday 21 January
Promising new education interventions are potentially being ‘unnecessarily scrapped’ because trials to test their effectiveness may be insufficiently faithful to the original research, a study has warned.
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Advice squad
Thursday 20 January
When COVID-19 first forced the country into lockdown, Gav Topley, a research student at the Faculty whose work examines the challenges facing young men from lower-income settings, became concerned about the impact on mental health. He decided to found Lads’ Advice: an online peer support group where men can share problems in a safe, encouraging space. Two years on, it has transformed life for many of its 5,000 members.
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Read the full story
Evaluations of simulation-based training to develop soft skills in healthcare feature ‘significant gaps’
Wednesday 12 January
Newly-published evidence suggests that the simulation-based learning interventions on which trainee healthcare professionals often rely to develop important, non-technical skills are being inadequately evaluated before they are potentially put to use.
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Learning through ‘guided’ play can be as effective as direct instruction up to at least age eight
Wednesday 12 January
Teaching younger children through ‘guided’ play can support key aspects of their learning and development at least as well, and sometimes better, than traditional, direct instruction, according to a new analysis.
Together we can do it
Tuesday 11 January
After receiving an OBE in the New Year's Honours List for services to international girls' education, Professor Pauline Rose discusses recent progress in research on global education for women and girls - and why now, more than ever, this is a field that deserves wider attention and recognition.
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Read the full story
Hologram patients to help train future doctors and nurses
Monday 10 January
Health professionals of the future could soon be training on holograms of patients, as a result of a new partnership involving the Faculty of Education.
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Read the full story
Professor Pauline Rose receives OBE for Services to International Girls’ Education
Saturday 1 January
Professor Pauline Rose, Professor of International Education and Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre in the Faculty of Education, has received the OBE in the 2022 New Year's Honours List for Services to International Girls’ Education.
Professor Rose said: “I’m truly honoured and genuinely surprised to receive an OBE for services to international girls’ education. Thanks to all who’ve worked with me, supported and challenged me over the years. I look forward to continued collaboration on evidence to improve quality education for all.”
Further information about New Year's Honours awarded to staff associated with the University of Cambridge is available on the university news pages.
Citizens in the making
Friday 17 December
A new ethnographic analysis of some of India’s most successful schools shows how their focus on cultivating ‘active harmony’, rather than traditional academic goals, may provide a template for the elusive challenge of teaching ‘citizenship’.
New centre to foster global conversations about ethical issues raised by science
Thursday 9 December
The University of Cambridge is announcing the launch of a new research centre, the Kavli Centre for Ethics, Science, and the Public, based at the Faculty of Education, to engage publics and scientists with the ethical implications of scientific discovery and its impact on society.
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Read the full story
Universities under attack?
Thursday 9 December
Researchers have launched a three-year, international study which aims to examine political and economic pressures that are changing the fundamental role and character of universities globally, particularly in relation to their mission to serve a wider ‘public good’ and to reduce societal conflict.
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Sculpture of Paulo Freire installed as symbol of resistance to attacks on education
Friday 26 November
The University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education has become the first institution outside Brazil to install one of a series of iconic sculptures of Paulo Freire: a giant of educational thought whose ideas are under attack from the country’s Government.
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Private education in lower-income countries is having limited impact on learning
Monday 22 November
A rapid increase in the number of private schools in lower-income parts of the world is having surprisingly little effect – and in certain cases perhaps no real impact at all – on learning, researchers have found.
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Students who self-identify as multilingual perform better at GCSE
Thursday 11 November
Young people who consider themselves ‘multilingual’ tend to perform better across a wide range of subjects at school, regardless of whether they are actually fluent in another language, new research shows.
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“It’s almost as if they don’t exist”: Education policy failing to account for learners with PMLD
Tuesday 9 November
The policy framework that supposedly guides education for pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) is setting expectations and goals which are often completely at odds with their capabilities and lives, a study says.
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Read the full story
Social media is reshaping universities’ value systems in a scramble for likes and shares
Thursday 4 November
Universities’ value judgements about research are becoming ‘coupled’ to social media platforms as they compete for funding by demonstrating their influence beyond academia, an analysis suggests.
Jewish autistic pupils thrive as bilingual learners, after communities reject advice “not to teach Hebrew”
Thursday 28 October
Parents and teachers of Jewish autistic children say they frequently have to disregard outdated professional advice not to teach them Hebrew – a recommendation they describe as “stealing” their cultural identity.
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Paulo Freire 100: Fortnight of free events celebrating founding figure in critical pedagogy
Friday 22 October
The legacy of Paulo Freire – a pivotal, transformative figure in global education whose centenary falls this year – is being celebrated in a series of free events at the University of Cambridge starting on 1 November.
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New research initiative to influence global policy and funding priorities to support girls’ education in sub-Saharan Africa
Wednesday 13 October
CAMFED (the Campaign for Female Education) and the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, have announced a new partnership to examine how community-led interventions that target the needs of the most marginalised children can be scaled through education systems in Tanzania and in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Read the full story