BERA launched the Education: The State of the Discipline initiative in 2019 to offer a comprehensive account of the state of education, as an academic discipline, as a field of practice, and as a pivotal element of social and political policy across the four nations of the UK. By providing stakeholders with research evidence, we aimed to empower them in advocacy for education research and education researchers.

Two principles have underpinned the initiative:

• That education as an academic discipline shares characteristics with many other disciplines, including those that have been established for much longer in universities worldwide;
• The importance of the intersections between educational research and practice including in teacher education and training, which in recent work has been articulated as ‘close-to-practice-research’.

Our reports from each stage of the initiative aim to equip stakeholders in every part of the sector with the most objective and powerful information on which to base their advocacy for, and their efforts to grow the size, influence and impact of, education. We hope the outcomes of the project will also be key to informing decision-making processes within BERA.

The five projects that form part of the state of the discipline initiative were:

1. A Systematic scoping review of the literature
2. A survey of education researchers’ work, experiences and identities
3. An exploration of existing statistical data relating to staff equality in UK higher education
4. An analysis of Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact case studies
5. A quantitative assessment of the progress of education as an academic discipline in UK universities through analysis of REF data

Drawing on the conclusions of these five research projects, BERA has published a statement on the position of education as an academic discipline. Celebrating its outstanding impact and outputs and that the “quality of much education research is world leading”, BERA also acknowledges the challenges it faces, from “significant structural inequalities to a deterioration in working conditions for the majority of education researchers over time”.

Solutions to these challenges require collaboration and collective effort from governments, funders, university leadership, educational researchers, and organisations such as BERA. This statement and evidence upon which it is based are designed to stimulate that collaboration.

Read the statement here

In June 2023 we held a high-level invitation-only event that brought together the outcomes of our commissioned research and analysis and allowed senior leaders from across the discipline to discuss the findings, the wider issues raised and debate how educational research should respond. We would now be grateful for your input as BERA contemplates the next steps. 

The link here contains some suggested next steps that emerged from the discussions in June. We would value input from the wider research community on which areas are the most urgent, and which should be prioritised by BERA.

Read the project reports below.

June 2023 Event

In June 2023 we held a high-level invitation-only event that brought together the outcomes of our commissioned research and analysis and allowed senior leaders from across the discipline to discuss the findings, the wider issues raised and debate how educational research should respond. 

We also discussed the outcomes of a quantitative assessment of the progress of education as an academic discipline in UK universities through the analysis of REF data, comparing the 2021 outcomes to both the 2014 REF and other disciplines.

The videos from this event are below

Research Intelligence issue 154: Education: The State of the Discipline

Guest-edited by Dominic Wyse, this issue of Research Intelligence features summaries of two of these major outputs: a study of staff equality data in education departments in UK universities (Belluigi et al., 2023) and findings from a survey examining the characteristics, experiences and attitudes of education researchers working in UK higher education (Morris et al., in press). Further articles offer a range of perspectives relevant to the issues raised in these reports and the State of the Discipline initiative more widely.

Read the issue below