Institutions across higher education often grapple with challenges of tackling quality issues that are informed by the literature and exemplars of good practice. This is even more exacerbated in further education, who often have fewer resources and staff with the capacity, skills, or experience to take scholarly informed approaches to quality matters. A few institutions across the sector and internationally have created pedagogic research centres to address this, but often at the cost of significant investment.

In FE, the majority of staff do not have any capacity for pedagogic work as part of their role or contract so there is often a limited culture for scholarly practice. Similarly in HE, academics and third space professional staff often do not have the space to focus on this.

This project aims to change the sector culture to promote more literature informed approaches to the student learning experience by creating self-sustaining environments which foster pedagogic research informed decision making on quality matters. The team will develop a model and exemplars for promoting pedagogical research communities, which address the challenges of lack of institutional culture and resources for promoting a scholarly approach.

In addition to the model of evidence informed decision making, the project team will create a pilot community of practice which will lay the foundations for promoting community-sustaining approaches to pedagogic research and good practice without the need for large scale investment.

Colleagues across the sector will be able to learn from and adapt the community’s practices and findings to create their own institutional cultures where staff are more enabled and empowered to take evidence informed quality decisions, leading to more users who can make quality informed decisions informed by literature.

Project lead:

University of Bath

Project partners:

University of Hull, Leeds Trinity University, Barnsley College, Askham Bryan College and Scholars School System