Unit of Assessment 23
Education

Our Institute of Education has a national and international reputation for impactful research making important contributions to theory. Through the Education, Language and Learning Research Division we conduct research that addresses the overarching aim of improved education and learning as a route to enhanced self-efficacy, economic well-being and improved life chances.

• 84% increase in our 4* research outputs in #REF2021.
• 100% of environment submission rated 4* and 3* (conducive to producing internationally excellent research & very considerable impact).

Our two interrelated research groups address broad education concerns: how literacy and language skills can best be developed, and tackling issues of educational access and inequality.

• Language and literacy in education: our research focuses on development of language for those with and without special educational needs, as well as second language acquisition. Strengths include research on foreign and second language education; pedagogy for learners with English as an additional language and other bilingual learners; reading, writing and vocabulary development; and eye movements during reading.
• Improving equity and inclusion through education: we focus on educational equality, inclusion and social justice, from early years to the lifelong learning of adults. This encompasses health, social mobility, and the role of class, ethnicity and gender in education. We also explore leadership, teacher cognition, values in teaching and learning, and the impact of pedagogy and practice on educational outcomes.

Our researchers form a central part of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism, a University-wide Interdisciplinary Research Centre that is a hub for research into linguistic, psychological, clinical and educational aspects of literacy and multilingualism.

Staff and doctoral students

We submitted 13 staff (12.6 FTE), including 4 Professors, 5 Associate Professors, 2 Lecturers and 2 Early Career Research Fellows. We have an annual average of 31 PhD students, with 112 doctoral completions over the assessment period. In 2019/20 doctoral students came from 23 countries including the UK.

We are a partner in the ESRC-funded South-East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) doctoral training partnership and the Institute of Education has held the role of Education Pathway Chair since 2019.

Research centres and partnerships

• Creative Multilingualism: an international project with 6 universities, led by Oxford, in which Reading led the Education Strand (AHRC funded, 2016-20).
• University of Cambridge: a collaboration that led to grants from the Templeton Foundation to support 5 interrelated projects to explore pupils' and teachers' thinking about science and religion.
• University of Nottingham, Malaysia: collaboration on a British Academy-funded project enabling us to extend our reading research by exploring cross-language transfer among bilingual Malay-English speaking children.

Sector recognition

Selected examples of national and international recognition between 2014 and 2020:

• Fulbright Scholarship (2020) (Dr Naomi Flynn)
• UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (Dr Rowena Kasprowicz, 2021-25)

Examples of the impact our research has had at local, national and global levels.