Close
UCL Institute of Education is working on numerous ground-breaking projects to understand how people are responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
A duty of care and a duty to teach: educational priorities in response to the COVID-19 crisis
Led by Professor Gemma Moss, this study explores the challenges the COVID-19 crisis sets primary school teachers. It will examine the diverse roles primary schools play in their local communities and how these vary depending upon levels of social disadvantage.
Coping and wellbeing in families during the COVID-19 crisis
Dr Katie Quy and Dr Lisa Fridkin are investigating coping and wellbeing in children aged 7-11 years, and their families, during the COVID-19 crisis. The project aims to explore how the current situation might be affecting children’s wellbeing, the types of coping strategies which might be protective or harmful, and the kinds of things that might need to be done to help children manage the current situation and to ‘recover’ afterwards.
COVID-19: Global social trust and mental health
Dr Keri Wong is working on a study looking at the short and long-term effects of COVID-19 on individual's social trust in relationships, mental and physical health. Involving UCL and four other universities (University of Pennsylvania, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nanyang Technological University, University of Trento), this study will to enable comparisons between the UK's lockdown experience and the experiences in other countries where they have adopted different COVID guidelines.
FACT Covid: Families and Community Transitions under Covid
Dr Humera Iqbal, Dr Katherine Twamley and Dr Charlotte Faircloth are working on a multi-country research project to examine the impact of the coronavirus on everyday family life. By focusing on families, this project explores both how individuals respond to public health measures put in place, and how these are negotiated with others in the household and family. The team is interested in how intra-household differences affect individuals’ experiences, particularly across gender and generations.
Families in Tower Hamlets: impacts of COVID-19
This project is about everyday life in the midst of a pandemic. The team, led by Professor Claire Cameron, is working with Born in Bradford, a cohort study aiming to reduce health inequalities, to examine the social, economic and health impacts of COVID-19 on family life with young children.
Study findings will help support Tower Hamlets council to shape its service offer to all families with young children, especially those newly impoverished and those designated vulnerable: pregnant women, and children.
The role of teaching/classroom assistants during the COVID crisis
Led by Professor Gemma Moss, this study is looking at the contributions teaching/classroom assistants and those working in classroom support roles have made and the dilemmas they encounter while working with children, families, and teachers as schools switch between supporting children's learning in school and at home.
More research
The Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) has launched a nationwide survey of the participants of five national longitudinal cohort studies, to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Katy Sutcliffe and Professor James Thomas have developed a living systematic map of the evidence on COVID-19. This covers several topics, including health impacts, transmission and social and economic impacts, among others.
Professor Allison Littlejohn and Professor Martin OIiver have started the 'UCL Moving to Online Teaching and Homeworking (MOTH)' study, examining the experiences of university staff moving to online teaching and working in response to COVID-19. Professor Littlejohn discusses the project in the Research for the Real World S02E01 podcast 'How working from home is working (or not)'.
Dr Dylan Kneale is developing a survey to examine whether sexuality-based inequalities are at risk of being exacerbated during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
- Professor David Voas is collaborating with researchers in the United States and Australia on computational simulations of human factors in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. These include people’s willingness to comply with infection suppression measures, such as social distancing.
- Dr Kirstine Hansen is looking at what has happened to crime in London as a result of the COVID- 19 pandemic.
- Dr Roberto Filippi and Dr Matt Somerville are leading a new project examining how effective homeschooling has been for pupils during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Melissa Bond is working on a new project examining which technology parents believe is supporting their children to learn most effectively during lockdown.
- Dr Sara Young is investigating the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on children’s heritage language learning. The study explores how Polish supplementary schools in the UK have continued their work during lockdown, including grading students on their GCSE and A level Polish exams.
- Dr Yana Manyukhina is leading a project that will investigate the impact of living and learning under a pandemic on children’s education and wellbeing.
- Dr Caroline Oliver, Professor Carol Vincent and Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou are exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on autistic children and young people’s educational experiences as well as that of their parents. Funded by the British Education Research Association, the project will use participatory qualitative methods to work with families and young people with autism to understand how they have experienced lockdown, home-schooling, and virtual learning, as well as their experiences of transitions back to school after the COVID-19 lockdown.
- Dr Elaine Chase is collaborating with researchers at the University of Liverpool and University of Southampton in a new project exploring how the pandemic has affected young unaccompanied asylum-seekers in England legally and socially.