Influencing the research and policy agenda in geography education

1. Influencing the research and policy agenda in geography education Graham Butt University of Birmingham GTE Conference University of London 27-29 January 2007

2. A starting point…? • Criticisms of quality and relevance of UK educational research since late 1990s. • Whitty (2005) claims educational research ‘lacks rigour and culmination’, contains ‘theoretical incoherence and ideological bias’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘weak user engagement with findings’, ‘poor dissemination’, ‘inaccessibility’, ‘low value for money’. • Furlong and Oancea (2005) ‘a perception of poor quality remains prevalent in government circles’.

3. Geography attracts only limited research money, often for smaller scale, practitioner-based, research - which the government largely sees as a means of providing professional development for teachers. • Such research may be of high quality, but usually lacks significant impact.

4. ESRC – Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) How does a large scale research organisation in education views its programme of research? • i. user engagement • ii. knowledge generation by project teams • iii. knowledge synthesis through thematic activities • iv. knowledge transformation for impact • v. capacity building for professional development • vi. partnership for sustainability

5. Furlong and Oancea (2005) • ‘Over the last 20 years there has been a growing recognition of the need for tighter links between research, practice and policy. There is increasing recognition of the legitimacy of the policy-oriented quest for answers, and the need for research to contribute to solutions; as a result the idea of ‘evidence-informed’ policy and practice has rapidly gained support and is coming to shape research agendas throughout the country’ (p.6)

6. Conclusions • shift from ‘pure’ research to ‘what works’ • ‘new social contract’ for research, ‘marketisation’ • challenging circumstances for researchers in geography education – time; resources; nature of research funding to institutions (RAE); lack of professional infrastructures for knowledge creation, transformation and dissemination; co-ordination of effort. • Pollard (2005) ‘whilst diversity may contribute to innovation, the potential for duplication of effort, waste of resource and confusion is also considerable’

7. A way forward? • to create a clear group identity, recognisable to others in education and policy circles • to discuss targeting/bidding for research money from government (etc) to further research in geography education • to form sub groupings that might target writing/research on particular issues in geography education • to discuss research and publication strategies • to read/comment on the research ideas/papers of others in the group • to ‘target’ particular conferences, meetings, funding opportunities, etc with our publications • to become a first ‘port of call’ for government/policy makers on matters related to geography education

8. Would it be valuable to form a group of research active geography educationists with an interest in policy making/shaping? What should its aims be? What should its ‘organisational procedures’ be? How should its membership be determined? What should it ‘target’ first? In what ways? Discussion: