ABSTRACT
This chapter looks briefly at the state of education research in developed countries like UK, and at some recent improvements in the funding and commissioning of evidence-based education work. For several decades, and probably much longer, UK education research has been criticised for not providing the kind of evidence base necessary to improve education especially by raising attainment for disadvantaged pupils. In the UK, one of the first major responses was the then huge ESRC-funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), set up to permit applicants to have their projects funded at a level that the generation of safe evidence on improving learning was deemed to require. The Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF) is intended to meet the long-term demand for robust evidence on school improvement. A number of key funders of social science in the UK have set up a National Quantitative Methods (QM) Initiative, intended to boost knowledge and research using numeric evidence including big datasets, and large-scale evaluations.
