The Education Policy and Research Service (EPRS) Top Ten for 2022-23

By Helen Aberdeen, Director Education Policy and Research Service (EPRS) School of Education, University of Bristol

For many who work in education, the summer break provides a welcome breathing space to clear those little jobs which we have been meaning to do for ages. It also gives us some time to look back and reflect.

As Director of our Education Policy and Research Service (EPRS), I have had a busy year – in a good way. In addition to summarising 110 research and policy reports, we have developed a new EPRS toolkit based on the Core Content Framework for Initial Teacher Training – we will be officially launching the toolkit in September, hoping to persuade many ITT institutions of its usefulness. (more…)

What’s ‘what’ in RE: Relating the what, the how and the why of curriculum content

Blog post by Dr David Lewin, University of Strathclyde, and Dr Janet Orchard, School of Education, University of Bristol

We welcome the research report on Religious Education recently published by Ofsted, the inspectorate for schools in England led by Dr Richard Kueh, whose academic engagement with the subject is widely respected.

Kueh’s report has already inspired some interesting responses across the RE community, so we thought we should join the conversations. To be upfront about our own interests here, we are academics currently planning a research project called ‘After Religious Education’ in which we hope to explore many similar issues informed by the expertise of teachers, academics in Religious Studies, and academics in Education Studies. (more…)

Document Summary Service chart toppers Spring 2020

Blog post by Helen Aberdeen, Director of the Document Summary Service

What a Spring term it turned out to be for those of us in the education sector! In my role as a PGCE tutor I have been on a steep learning curve getting to grips with all things online. In my other role as Director of the Document Summary Service, things have carried on a more even keel. As we moved into March I had wondered if every report research and guidance report produced would be focussed on the current crisis, but this turned out not to be the case – interesting and useful reports continue to emerge from a wide range of sources. I should also mention that the summaries have become an invaluable resource as out student teachers move to working independently. (more…)

The Document Summary Charts!

The Document Summary Service, School of Education

Blog post by Helen Aberdeen, Director of the Document Summary Service & Bristol Guide, School of Education, University of Bristol.

Now we are well into 2020 and spring is in our sights, it is a good time not just to look forward, but also to take stock of the year which has gone.

One of the things which I like to do as Director of the Document Summary Service here at the University of Bristol is to take a look at the ‘Top ten’ – i.e. the summaries which had the most downloads from our subscribers over the last year. If you are a subscriber, it may be interesting to see if your interests align with those of the subscriber community as a whole. If you are not yet a subscriber, I hope that this overview will give you a flavour of the wide-ranging scope of the summaries and tempt you to join us in 2020. (more…)