Institute for Research in Education (IREd)

Co-Directors of IREd: Professor Uvanney Maylor and Professor Janice Wearmouth

Underpinning our education system is a focus on knowledge acquisition and the 'need to know' which, historically, has driven assessment practice and determined pedagogy and teaching. Included in the University’s research strategy is the intention that a characteristic feature of much of our research will be that it is applicable to the professions we engage with, contributes to the work of colleagues in practice, and informs public policy. Consonant with this intention, the research interests of IREd members lie at the interface between theory and practice and reflect the inter-relationship between views of learning and of knowledge, and how they relate to policy, pedagogy, assessment and the specified curriculum. Within the concepts of knowledge, learning, policy, pedagogy, the curriculum and assessment the major umbrella research focus of IREd that binds all its members’ research interests together is social justice, that is, research that is intended to recognise individual educational identities whilst enhancing the future lives of those associated with education and producing more equitable outcomes.

Our social justice research aims to contribute to educational practices which:

• enable students to feel that they belong, can achieve social mobility, challenge discrimination, educational inequality and contribute to the ‘social good’ (UNESCO).
• are based on principles of respect for students and communities with diverse social and cultural backgrounds, and a commitment to impactful research which ensures equity of opportunity and outcomes.

The research expertise of IREd’s members - who are drawn primarily, though not exclusively, from the School of Education and the Academy for Learning and Teaching Excellence - is interdisciplinary, combining psychological, sociological, historical, philosophical and professional frameworks. We are particularly interested in educational research that engages with issues of social justice (broadly construed).

An overview of past activities in IREd can be found in our research newsletters, available at IREd - Newsletter

The Institute is also host to the Bedfordshire branch of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB), convened by Dr Oli Belas, who was also co-chair of the PESGB's Committee on Race and Ethnicity, founding and contributing editor of the Society's Blog, and will be interim Chair of the Society's new Inclusion Committee.