Expertise

Reflecting our concern with using research to promote effective educational programmes and interventions, we have particular expertise in relation to five key areas:

Outcomes-Focused Service Design
Baseline Research
Research Syntheses and Systematic Reviews
Rigorous Evaluations
Children’s Rights-Based Approaches

1. Outcomes-Focused Service Design

We have developed strong expertise in working alongside local organisations to support them in developing an explicitly outcomes-focused approach to their own initial planning and strategy development and also the more detailed service design work that follows. Much of this work is now being taken forward through the Improving Children's Lives initiative, whose service design work is being led by .

2. Baseline Research

We have developed considerable expertise in conducting large-scale baseline surveys that seek to inform an organisation’s initial strategy development and service planning. These surveys are designed to provide evidence of the nature and incidence of poor social and/or educational outcomes among the population. They typically help to answer questions such as whether these poor outcomes tend to be generically spread across the population and/or concentrated among particular sub-groups (whether defined geographically and/or socially and economically) and also what other social and educational factors tend to be associated with these poor outcomes.

To this extent, these baseline studies can be viewed as a form of epidemiology but where the focus is now social and educational outcomes rather than health outcomes. It is with this in mind that the Centre for Effective Education is attempting to draw upon existing epidemiological expertise at Queen’s and encourage its application to social and educational interventions through the Improving Children’s Lives initiative that it is leading.

3. Research Syntheses and Systematic Reviews

The Centre for Effective Education has developed expertise over the last few years in undertaking a number of research syntheses and systematic reviews of research into the effectiveness of existing educational programmes and interventions. Such reviews play an important role in the more detailed service design work of organisations by providing clear and accessible summaries of the types of programmes or interventions that have already been tried and shown to work elsewhere. Of course we should not assume that such programmes can just be picked up and applied in a different context. As such, part of the expertise we have developed in undertaking these research syntheses therefore is the ability to critically assess the evidence and to make sound judgements on the potential applicability of particular interventions to the specific contexts for which a proposed service is being planned.

4. Rigorous Evaluations

The Centre for Effective Education has also developed a strong expertise in relation to evaluating the effectiveness of educational programmes and interventions. In particular, the Centre has gained considerable experience over the past few years of designing and running randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental evaluations. Such methods provide the strongest and most robust evidence of whether a particular programme or intervention is actually having an effect in relation to leading to real and measurable improvements in children’s development.

Currently, the Centre is actually running more randomised controlled trials in education than any other educational research centre in the UK or Ireland.

5. Children’s Rights-Based Approaches

Finally, the Centre is developing its expertise in relation to the application of a children’s rights approach to the design, delivery and evaluation of educational programmes and interventions. Our work in this area is still in its formative stages and is being taken forward in partnership with the Centre for Children's Rights led by Professor Laura Lundy. A commitment to children’s rights is an underpinning value in relation to the two major initiatives that the Centre for Effective Education is leading: Improving Children’s Lives; and also the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity (JLICED). We are also currently working in partnership with Barnardo’s Northern Ireland to use the baseline research they have commissioned us to undertake as a demonstration project to explore how a children’s rights-based approach to service planning and design and might be implemented in practice.