29th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement – State of the Art Briefings

Summary

What Works Scotland colleagues and partners led a State of the Art Session at the 29th International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement held in Glasgow in January 2016 to stimulate discussion about what educational research might learn from other disciplines.

Professor Ken Gibb spoke about the methodological and implications from housing research.

Steve Allen, Former Deputy Chief Constable Police Scotland, spoke about collaborative leadership within the context of public service reform.

Professor Sayantan Gohsal, Professor of Economics at the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow, spoke about his work using randomised controlled trials and interventions to explore aspirations in the South.

Dr Lorna Kelly, Associate Director of the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, offered her insights into research and development on health and wellbeing and how this connects to the raising attainment agenda.

Professor Chris Chapman chaired the session, Professor David Reynolds (University of Southampton) set the scene and provided a context for the session, and Professor Karen Seashore (University of Minnesota) provided the response by identifying a number of key synergies, opportunities and challenges posed by these external perspectives that have implications for the future development of the field of educational research.

The four briefing papers are presented in as a collection within this document. They are:

Session 1: Learning from other Disciplines and Sectors
Session 2: Educational Effectiveness and Improvement Research, a Population Health Perspective
Session 3: Poverty, Marginalisation and Aspirations Failure: implications for the design of pro-poor policies
Session 4: Adding value to effectiveness and improvement – are there research, policy and practice lessons from housing?