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Capacity building

Research capacity is about the resources available in the education system for carrying out research as well as using it. For research providers, capacity includes the following dimensions:

  • Sufficiency of researchers to undertake commissioned research speedily and giving value for money and high quality
  • Diversity of approaches and methods 
  • Ability to innovate, reflect on existing practice and seek continual improvement
Capacity issues for users include:

  • Ability to identify where existing research can be used
  • Identify research gaps and devise ways of seeking to fill these
  • Ability to distinguish good research from bad and understand the need to reconcile different research studies where these give contrasting results
There is an increasing focus on boosting research capacity in response to perceived weakness in the system.  Developments are at national level, sectoral level e.g. within university departments, as well as via practitioner and researcher networks and systems.

Links

Educational Research Capacity in Wales: A review

This reports on review of capacity building in education research in Wales -and sets out recommendations about future work.

Building Research Skills - PhDPlus

PhDPlus is an innovative research training programme offered by the IKON consortium: Institute of Education, University of London; King’s College London; Oxford University; National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales. The programme leads to a PhD/DPhil and incorporates a year’s internship attached to a research programme.

National Guidance Research Forum

The Guidance Council, in consultation with the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling (NICEC), has submitted a report to DfES outlining a proposal to establish a National Guidance Research Forum.  The remit of this Forum will be to improve the capacity, coherence, quality and co-ordination of UK research on career guidance.  Click here to access an overview of the National Guidance Research Forum (NGRF).  Click here to view a paper on the purpose of the NGRF's Strategic Group.

Research Capacity Building Network (RCBN)

The purpose of the RCBN is to support the research capacity building activities of the ESRC's Teaching and Learning Research Programme and, where possible, extend these to the wider educational research community. In particular, the RCBN has been established to facilitate the sharing of research skills, knowledge and expertise, largely by providing and brokering needs-directed research capacity-building activities on a voluntary and career-development basis. The website provides a rich source of information about the initiative as well as key references and sources of other capacity building work.

Dedicated Research Centres
The Department for Education and Skills has commissioned a number of dedicated research centres, which focus respectively on the Wider Benefits of Learning, Economics of Education, ICT, and post-16 learning (co-sponsored by the Learning and Skills Research Council). The Centres are intended to build cumulative knowledge and expertise by bringing together researchers from a number of different institutions across a range of disciplines. They focus on establishing more sustained, higher quality research, to enable research findings to better inform policy. The Centres are also designed to increase training opportunities for new and existing researchers.

Centre for Economics of Education

The Centre for the Economics of Education (CEE) has been set up to undertake systematic and innovative research in the field of the economics of education i.e. that which is earnings related. The Centre is investigating a broad range of policy questions and is strategically addressing issues which have previously only been tackled in a more fragmented way by individual researchers. 
 
Wider Benefits of Learning Research Centre

Established to investigate the non-economic benefits that learning brings to the individual learner and to society as a whole. It is exploring the wider benefits of learning in six domains: health, ageing, family and parenting, crime, citizenship and participation, and leisure and lifestyle. Its research approach is multidisciplinary, employing the full range of social science methods. It is boosting capacity by making available its research tools to researchers in the field.

Learning and Skills Research Centre

A key aim of the Centre is to boost capacity in post-16 research. It offers information, support and development services that help to develop research capacity and skills. It also encourages collaboration between researchers and is aiming to increase the body of quantitative research, longitudinal studies and international comparative research.

eppi.ioe.ac.uk">EPPI Centre

The EPPI Centre has developed a range of training and support programmes for researchers interested in undertaking systematic reviews. These include workshops and a review manual which is available on-line.  It is also developing a user engagement programme for users so that they can become better involved in the EPPI review process. In addition, the publication of each EPPI Centre review includes a range of user summaries which are intended to help communicate the findings to stakeholder groups e.g. parents and pupils.

ESRC

In addition to the Research Capacity Building Network the ESRC has a wide range of capacity building initiatives. These include a four million pounds research methods programme for the development of both qualitative and quantitative methods within the context of substantive research.  In addition the ESRC supports a number of research studentship programmes, including the TLRP training fellowships.

Arts Council England

The Arts Council has produced a guide to developing and commissioning research for the arts funding system.

Learning and Skills Development Agency

LSDA has developed a programme to improve research and development skills in the post-16 learning sector. The programme is designed to be a practical, flexible and accessible resource to fit the needs of busy professionals who are involved in research and development projects. It is intended for anyone with a need to learn or brush up on skills for research or development projects.

UK Centre Legal Education

This centre is dedicated to building research capacity in legal education. It  specifically focuses on improving the use of research by teachers of law in their own teaching, and is developing hard data and evidence relating to the teaching of law.

Curriculum, Evaluation and Management (CEM)

Based at the University of Durham CEM is committed to applying the best standards of science to the development and evaluation of policies.

Teaching Research Development Network (TDRN)

Based at the University of Manchester TDRN is a cross-disciplinary network aimed at helping members develop action research programmes to help improve teaching and learning.

Centre for Applied Statistics (CAS)

Based at Lancaster University, the centre undertakes statistical research and provides a range of courses in statistics.

Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS)

The Institute of Education, University of London runs this independent centre, which focuses on building capacity in longitudinal data.


 

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  Related Research
The Funders' Forum published a report on Capacity Building
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