Nuffield Foundation: funding
science education
Angela Hall Director, Science and Mathematics
Education
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• Nuffield’s role in funding of science education
• Brief discussion of educational design research
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Changes at Nuffield
Internal
development
plus funding
of external
research
Externally
funded
research and
development
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Project funding
• Research and development projects
• Relating to policy and practice
• Less interested in contributions to knowledge
(pure theoretical research)
• Detail of dissemination crucial.
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Features of projects
• Rigour is crucial
• Eclectic approach to methodology
• Substance of the study and its potential for
strategic impact and innovation in practice are
important
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Collaborations
• Particular interest in joint proposals
• Combine expertise and methodologies from
different disciplines
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Process
• Outline stage (3 sides of A4)
• Short-listing is competitive ( around 2/10 shortlisted; 30% put to Trustees are funded)
• Peer review of short-listed applications
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Tendering and
commissioning
• Some commissioning and tendering for specific
pieces of work
• Stimulating / facilitating discussion, hopefully
leading to applications
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Themes of particular interest
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• How children acquire the foundations of scientific
understanding in the early years and through
primary school. The implications of this for
curriculum, resources, pedagogy and assessment.
• How specific curricula, resources, pedagogies, and
approaches to assessment influence students’
understanding of science through the secondary
school phase.
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• Issues of transition relating to secondary science
education, in particular the relationship with primary
education; subject and qualification choices and
pathways; factors affecting participation in science
education at different ages and stages including
transition into higher education and other postcompulsory routes.
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• The promotion of, and support for, quantitative
skills and statistical literacy in young scientists.
•The gender dimensions of all of the above.
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Educational design
research
(This does not indicate a bias)
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The case for educational
design
To what extent could studies using investigatordesigned educational interventions be improved if
investigators could rely on accessible and useful
principles of design?
What knowledge from researchers is useful for
designers?
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Products of research and
research apprenticeships
• Skilled practitioners (educational researchers)
• Additions to the corpus of scholarly knowledge –
the products of research
• Additions to the corpus of scholarly craft
knowledge, the means by which research is produced
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Products of design and
development community
• Skilled practitioners (educational designers and
developers)
• Additions to the corpus of well-developed
materials – the products of design and development
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What is the problem?
• Little scholarship on the process of educational
design – implications for capacity
• Form of design experiments pays some attention
to synergies between research and design
• But - solid theoretical grounding and design
knowledge and skills rarely found in single individuals
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Area for development?
Educational design experiments underpinned by
theory but focusing on principles of design. This may
require collaborations between departments or
institutions leading to
• more principled design
• accumulation of design craft knowledge leading to more
effective resources
• more professionally produced research interventions
aiding dissemination of effective practice.
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Implication for methods
• Range of methods and methodology are implied
• Need to balance the requirement for rigour with the
need for data which informs future practice
• Need to e.g. understand the social situations leading to
desired outcomes; illuminate common features of effective
learning interventions; discover how generalised principles
are enacted in different contexts
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Summary
• Educational research: intervention studies use a resource
as a tool for theorising about how students learn through a
particular approach
• Educational design research: pragmatic aim leading to a
refined product
• Developing theory-based guidelines for design involves
synthesising and applying educational research
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Nuffield grants
• Science education call: end of July 2012
• No particular methodology favoured – this depends
on the aims of the study and the quality of the proposal is
most important
• Open to more exploratory early stages such as seminars
on themes relating to the call
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