D13 - Alison Lawson (NFER) and colleagues from eep, ttrb and CERUKplus: Connected resources for research and practice

1. Connected resources for
research and practice
Alison Lawson and Andrew Morris
UCET conference
10 November 2009

2. Free online resources
• Where do you go to find out about research?
• How do you know what is being researched right now?
• How do you find out what the findings mean for your
practice?
• There are several free online resources that offer a
wealth of information to people at all levels of education.

3. So what are they?
• eep – the educational evidence portal
• ttrb – the teacher training resource bank
• CERUKplus – the database of current
research in education and children’s
services in the UK
• there are others, too, but we’ll come back
to those

4. What are these resources?
• eep: the educational evidence portal draws
together published research across all fields of
education
• ttrb: the teacher training resource bank
contains research of particular use for people
training to teach
• CERUKplus: an online database of research in
education and children’s services under way
now in the UK

5. Quick background
• Each resource
– originated by particular organisations
– designed to meet a particular need
– aimed at a particular community
– free to use online
• Together the resources have
– raised awareness of research evidence
– proved the value of tools
– demonstrated what can be done

6. More about eep
• www.eep.ac.uk
• Combines many sources of information
• One search works for all sources
• Resource areas for themes, such as gifted and
talented
• Education news
• Managed by CfBT on behalf of consortium
• Funded by CfBT with DCSF, TDA, Becta and
others

8. More about ttrb
• www.ttrb.ac.uk
• Research and evidence for teacher education
• Research grouped into categories, e.g.
Curriculum, which is then further sub-divided
• E-librarians based at the Institute for
Education
• Education news
• Managed and run by consortium supported by
TDA

10. More about CERUKplus
• www.ceruk.ac.uk
• Research by academics and practitioners
• Research covers all levels and subject areas
• Find research partners and critical friends
• E-alerts for areas of interest
• Managed by NFER on behalf of DCSF
• Funded by DCSF and NFER

12. What use are these resources?
• Access to
o current and past research evidence
o research results accessible for practical use
• Allows users to
o share knowledge and learn from each other
o improve knowledge and practice through evidence
o build communities

13. Future plans
• eep – workshops for specific groups using eep, and new
version with browsing taxonomy and text mining
• ttrb – better linkage with related resources, more visual
guides and accessibility, more varied support for CPD needs.
enhanced glossaries, more ttrb events, increased user
customisation, more archive material to represent our
historical evidence base
• CERUKplus – learning and skills sector, action research from
schools, wider online community

14. Next steps
• We want to
– see the resources more widely used
– develop them for more effective use
• We need to
– build on the evidence about using evidence
– understand more precisely what potential users want
– work with communities to encourage use

15. Working together
We want to work directly with communities to:
• find out what each community really needs
• work out how we can improve the resources
• find ways of connecting the resources
• spread the word about free access
• encourage use

16. Over to you
• Try the resources for yourselves
• Compare and contrast
• Feedback to the group on what you found and
how these can be used, connected and
improved

17. Feedback: what do you think?
• How could you use these resources?
• How can we link them together most
effectively?
• What about these resources is most useful to
you in your work and/or research?
• How could these resources be improved?
• Anything else?

18. Other resources of interest
• pre-online – the e-version of practical
research for education journal
• DCSF research bites
• DCSF research newsletter
• GTC’s Research for Teachers
• What others do you use?

19. Any questions?