IOE Early Career Impact Fellowship

• Introduction to the Fellowship and overview of Research Impact – including definitions and how impact has evolved
• Building an Audience and Communicating Your Research
• Using Co-Production Principles to Engage Under Represented Groups in Research
• Crafting Written Evidence for Policy Audiences
• Tracking and Demonstrating Engagement and Impact Success
• Developing a Narrative and Writing an Impact Case Study
• Delivering Effective and Inclusive Events

Following the workshops, Impact Fellows begin to build on the skills developed to plan, deliver and evaluate an engagement and impact activity related to their area of research. Activities aim to address a question on the area of policy, practice or public understanding that their research has the potential to challenge, influence or inform. 

The IOE Research Development Manager, Tatiana Souteiro Dias, provides one-to-one support in liaison with colleagues.

At the end of the programme, the cohort of Impact Fellows work to co-create an event to share their learnings with the IOE research community. Impact Fellows continue to act as impact ambassadors/advisors within their research communities. They will receive a certificate upon completion.

Dr Rachel Benchekroun – Dr Rachel Benchekroun is a Senior Research Fellow on the NIHR-funded Fair Food Futures UK project led by UCL and University of York. This mixed methods research project explores the impact of food insecurity on families and the role of different models of community food organisations in reducing food insecurity and supporting families. Prior to that, Dr Benchekroun held an ESRC fellowship at the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU), mentored by Professor Ann Phoenix. This built on her ethnographic PhD research which explored how Hostile Environment policies in the UK affect racially minoritised mothers with insecure immigration statuses and ‘no recourse to public funds’. 

Dr Benchekroun intends to co-create a pilot interview-based podcast in collaboration with an informal interdisciplinary network of PhDs and early career researchers that she has initiated, researching precarious migration. The podcast will inspire an audience of frontline professionals, policymakers and activists to explore related research outputs (e.g. blog posts, journal articles) and apply key insights to their professional practice, fostering deeper engagement with the topic of precarious migration and its broader implications.

Output

• Between Borders podcast

Dr Sarah Dolaty – Dr Sarah Dolaty is an Early Career Researcher in the Department of Psychology and Human Development at the IOE, UCL, and a child and adolescent mental health clinician. She specialises in youth mental health and participatory research, with her PhD examining professional and young people’s experiences of collaboration in mental health programming across school and community settings. As part of the fellowship, she is developing "Building Our Toolbox of Youth Participation", a workshop that provides stakeholders with practical strategies for meaningful youth engagement, bridging research with practice.

Practitioners, policymakers, and community leaders working in youth mental health will directly benefit from the application of these research findings. By participating in the "Building Our Toolbox of Youth Participation" workshop, they will gain practical tools to assess programme readiness, implement effective participation strategies, and foster strong youth-adult partnerships. This will enable them to create more inclusive, youth-centred initiatives, ultimately enhancing the impact and sustainability of mental health programming. Young people will also benefit, as improved participation practices will amplify their voices and choices in decision-making processes, leading to more responsive and effective support systems.

Output

• A Toolbox for Youth Participation in Mental Health Programming

Enze Guo – Enze Guo is currently progressing towards the completion of a PhD in Global Citizenship Education. Activities conducted as part of the fellowship will provide greater visibility and agency to Global South doctoral students, ensuring their voices inform institutional policies beyond IOE. For senior leadership across Bloomsbury institutions and other London universities, the project will contribute evidence-based recommendations for embedding decolonisation within doctoral education, providing concrete strategies to enhance equity, inclusion, and global perspectives. For supervisors and department graduate tutors, it will offer practical insights into the unique struggles of Global South doctoral students, fostering more inclusive supervisory practices. Additionally, it will create a platform for peer support, enabling students across institutions to navigate structural challenges through collective dialogue.

Dr Liang Ge – Dr Liang Ge is a Lecturer of Sociology in UCL Social Research Institute, where they are a member of the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU). Dr Liang Ge's work lies in the intersection of cultural sociology, digital media and technologies, digital methods, gender, sexuality, youth and East and Southeast Asian popular cultures and creative industries.

The primary aim of the engagement and impact fellowship activity will be to facilitate meaningful dialogue between researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders on the ethical and social implications of AI-driven digital intimacy, aiming to raise awareness of the emotional and social needs of women and LGBTQ+ users engaging with AI chatbots, and to provide practical recommendations for more inclusive technology design.

Output

• Gamifying intimacy: AI-driven affective engagement

Dr Joanna Kolak – Dr Joanna Kolak is a lecturer in Language Development in the Department of Psychology and Human Development. Her research focuses on mono and bilingual language development and enhancing the quality of children's media. She has published a checklist for parents and educators to assess the educational potential of preschoolers' touchscreen apps and has conducted several studies evaluating the most popular apps on the market, as well as investigating children's learning from screens.

As part of her fellowship activities, Dr Kolak will distribute her checklist for evaluating the educational potential of apps to nurseries and community centres, helping parents and educators make informed choices about children's apps. She will also record a podcast summarising her research on selecting and using high-quality apps effectively, providing guidance on how to maximise their educational benefits for children.

Output

• A guide for caregivers and teachers on choosing high-quality apps for preschoolers

Dr Rebecca Moss – Dr Rebecca Moss works across the UCL Research Department for Medical Education and IOE on the I-CARE study. The study explores in which contexts, and why, staff from minoritised groups are more likely to leave or stay within the NHS workforce post-pandemic, if compared to white British groups. I-CARE is a three-year study funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Her research interest is in improving post-Covid experiences of healthcare provision from both service provider and user perspectives. She aims to use the Fellowship to foster relationships and develop a collaborative network with NHS England Regional Retention Managers and their senior Trust colleagues. The anticipated impact on retention managers and policy makers will be greater understanding of the strengths and current gaps in their policies. They will have access to a set co-created resources to demonstrate their commitment to supporting minoritised/international staff in Trust materials such as strategy documents and websites. In addition, a list of barriers to academic engagement and implementation of evidence-informed interventions within NHS contexts and suggested solutions for overcoming them will emerge from these activities.

Output

• Establishing a collaborative knowledge exchange network with key senior NHS staff briefing

Kristýna Skriczka – Kristýna Skriczka is based at the Social Research Institute working on the AHRC-funded Nkwihoreze project. This is a collaborative research and engagement project between UCL, Uyisenga Ni Imanzi and Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés Du Genocide (AERG), non-profit organisations based in Rwanda, which promotes and facilitates intergenerational dialogue through the arts on sensitive topics within families including loss, absence, conflict, mental distress, and memory, in the context of the 1994 Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda (PI Dr Kirrily Pells). Kristýna is interested in how children impacted by trauma make sense of their worlds and how they create and navigate their present and future lives in the context of families and communities. She brings her love of art and creativity into research, and specialises in creative knowledge exchange, dissemination, and public engagement. 

As part of her fellowship, Kristýna will translate the Nkwihoreze research into an artistic output, spotlighting the value of local knowledge systems and culture for community-driven trauma recovery. Families who took part in the Nkwihoreze project will be able to use the output to remember what they helped co-create and learn; psychosocial workers may use it to engage new families and policymakers will more easily access the benefits of using the Nkwihoreze approach.

Output

• Nkwihoreze: Arts for Resilience

Dr Juhayna Taha – Dr Juhayna Taha is a Lecturer in Language and Literacy Development at IOE’s Department of Psychology and Human Development. Her research spans across multiple languages, with a focus on Arabic, and explores the underlying mechanisms of language and reading development in typically developing children and those with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and dyslexia. Her research interests also include evaluating the quality of oral language provision in early years classrooms, especially in Jordan and Palestine, and examining its relationship with children’s language and reading outcomes. 

During her fellowship, and building on her PhD, Dr Taha will share her research findings and engage with speech and language therapists across the Arab region to better understand their experiences and challenges in assessing DLD. This will inform the co-creation of an Arabic digital guide that will equip Arab speech and language therapists with evidence-based information on DLD, including its symptoms in Arabic, best assessment practices, and guidance on using DLD screening tools Dr Taha has developed.

Output

• Identifying developmental language disorder in Arabic

Dr Elin Arfon is a Research Fellow for the National Consortium for Languages Education (NCLE) based at the International Centre for Intercultural Studies, at the Department of Culture, Communication and Media, IOE.

Her research interests centre around language learning and multilingual education in the UK context, with a specific focus on England and Wales. For her PhD research, funded by the ESRC and the Welsh Government and sponsored by British Council Wales, Elin conducted a qualitative inquiry into the beliefs of International Languages secondary school teachers regarding plurilingual education in the new Curriculum for Wales.

The fellowship project aims to raise awareness of the findings from Elin’s PhD research through publicly available materials in both English and Welsh. These materials are being shared with policy, practice and research colleagues who are thinking about next steps for the Curriculum for Wales in terms of multilingual education and International Languages learning, teaching and assessment in Wales.

Read the full briefings to find out more: 

• Supporting teachers to adopt plurilingual approaches in languages education in Wales (English version)
• Supporting teachers to adopt plurilingual approaches in languages education in Wales (Welsh version) 

Dr Sabina Barone is a social anthropologist based at the UCL Social Research Institute. Dr Barone is interested in human mobilities between West-North Africa and Europe and the effects of migration policies at Europe's threshold. Through a socio-legal approach, she examines everyday forms of liminality, precarity, and bordering that affect migrant men, women, and children with an irregular migration status.

Dr Barone’s research explores the International Organization for Migration's 'Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration' programme from Morocco towards West and Central Africa, and has the potential to benefit migration practitioners and decision-makers, as well as the general public, providing fresh evidence about a return migration programme from an understudied terrain, which can contribute to critically rethinking this controversial policy.

Through the fellowship, Dr Barone developed evidence-based resources including case studies and infographics and used them as a basis for workshops and meetings.

Find out more and view Dr Barone's research infographic:

• Migrants' Decision to Return and Pre-departure Process

Catherine Borra (UCL Social Research Institute) is a researcher working at the intersection of medical anthropology and epidemiology. Her doctoral research is funded by the ESRC and BBSRC, and explores the biosocial trajectories and experiences of chronic pain during the perimenopause. She has a clinical background in rehabilitation and women’s health so her work has a strong focus on impact within clinical practice and patient outcomes. In addition, Catherine is a research associate at Barts Health NHS Trust working on the representation of ethnic minorities in research and sustainability in orthopaedic practice.

Catherine’s research addresses the gender inequalities in chronic pain by exploring its intersection with the perimenopause. Her findings have the opportunity to influence clinical practice both in primary care and specialist pain management and women’s health services by providing data and context to chronic pain during perimenopause.

Dr Charis Bridger Staatz is a Senior Research Fellow based at IOE's Centre for Longitudinal Studies. Charis' research interests are in social inequalities in health, and particularly in understanding population level trends in obesity and body composition. Recent projects that Charis has been involved in include using the British Birth Cohorts to explore health inequalities in mid-life between the UK and US, and in understanding how experience of infections in early life impact accelerated aging in later life.

As part of her fellowship project, Charis developed a briefing note on her research on health inequalities, alongside the wider body of work on “generational health drift” in the British Birth Cohorts, seeking to benefit the general public, policy and third sector organisations who wish to advocate for changes in the way the healthcare and welfare systems are funded. This briefing note, alongside an infographic on the same topic, was used in an engagement event.

Anthony Isiwele is a researcher affiliated with the Social Research Institute, IOE. His research project, entitled "Enhancing Mental Health Support for Nigerian and Ghanaian Adolescents in London", aims to help develop culturally sensitive mental health support frameworks, addressing the unique challenges these communities face.

The research aspires to contribute to reducing stigma, improving access to mental health services, and enhancing the cultural competency of healthcare providers. This could foster a more inclusive and effective mental health care environment, significantly benefiting adolescents' mental well-being and contributing to broader societal understanding and support.

Read the executive summary to find out more:

• Executive Summary – Promoting Cultural Humility in Mental Healthcare for Black Youth in London: Impact Workshop

Dr Qian Liu is a Research Fellow at the Department of Education, Practice and Society, IOE. As a team member, she is now working on the Making Spaces 2 – an international project aimed at developing equitable STEM practices at makerspaces across five countries. She has also contributed to the ASPIRES 3 project to investigate young people’s STEM trajectories. Her research interests include technology-enhanced pedagogy, equitable participation in STEAM, and teacher professional development for technology integration.

The longitudinal research evidence on young people’s computing trajectories from ages 10 to 22 revealed the issues pertaining to equitable participation in computing, including male dominance, peer sexism, a lack of sense of belonging, high non-completion rate at the degree level, and feeling less prepared by A-levels for degree study. Based on the findings and insights, a roundtable event was organised to yield deeper and more practical understandings of the issues that hinder young people’s equitable and meaningful participation in computing from diverse but interconnected perspectives.

This event also provided a collective opportunity to foster a meaningful and critical discussion across sectors, with a focus on actions to better support diverse young people’s engagement in computing, resulting in a review of action points. Moreover, the review was presented in an engaging, illustrative manner through social media, to enhance public awareness of the issues and facilitate wider discussion based on the research and roundtable discussion.

Check Dr Qian Liu’s infographic: 

• Improving diversity in computing: A future research agenda

Yuncong Liu is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Education, Practice and Society at IOE and a Patient, Public, Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Officer, NIHR ARC North Thames at the Department of Applied Health Research, UCL. As part of the Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP) since August 2023, she focused on investigating and enhancing inclusive concepts for teaching and learning activities.

The primary beneficiaries of this project include the public, who will attain a detailed understanding of eugenics, and policymakers, who will receive a framework for crafting policies that address historical discriminations within institutions.

By leading focus group discussions with lecturers and the ELEP team, an informative podcast was created. This will be distributed to regions with a history of eugenics. The focus group seeks to deepen the knowledge of educators on incorporating the complex narrative of eugenics into teaching, promoting inclusive and thoughtful educational settings. This is crucial for the instruction of sensitive topics, enabling educators and the public to explore strategies for discussing such matters in an ethically and pedagogically sound way.

Listen to the podcast featuring Dr Yuncong Liu:

• Can Education Heal?

Evangeline Tabor is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies with a background in social epidemiology and medical anthropology. They specialise in LGBTQ+ health disparities and inequalities across the lifecourse with a particular focus on chronic physical health disparities and analyses using UK longitudinal cohort studies. They are currently researching pathways to impact and policy engagement in longitudinal studies.

Research on LGBTQ+ physical health can improve health and wellbeing in LGBTQ+ people through identifying issues and points of intervention, informing practitioners and professionals interacting with LGBTQ+ people, and highlighting the impact of historic and contemporary social inequality on health. Through the fellowship, discussions have been facilitated between researchers, policymakers, and people with lived experience to identify important future research and share existing evidence for better decision making.

The new cohort of IOE Early Career Impact Fellows 2022–23 has been selected following a panel selection process. The fellowship awards represent the impressive breadth and diversity of our research expertise across education and social sciences at IOE and the talents of our early career researchers.

Dr Catherine Antalek works as a Research Fellow for the Psychology and Human Development Department at IOE. Her research interests focus on the neurocognitive processes of reading development for typically developing, dyslexic, and bilingual readers. Dr Antalek is working on a project investigating the efficacy of common access arrangements, such as the use of extra time, a word processor, or a scribe, for secondary students with specific learning difficulties (SpLD). The findings from her research will benefit students and practitioners in understanding how different types of learners use their available resources to implement successful reading and exam strategies. The activity will specifically benefit secondary students who have been identified as needing an access arrangement for their GCSE tests by providing them with an instructional tool to help them to understand and to effectively use their arrangement for exam success. This tool will also help practitioners with implementing and streamlining training of access arrangements in schools.

Output

• Dr Catherine Antalek led a workshop with a group of Special Education Needs Co-ordinators, specialist assessors, parents and students as part of her fellowship activity. The aim of this workshop was to share findings from her Nuffield Foundation supported research, examining best practices for Access Arrangements. Dr Antalek drew on the expertise of practitioners and the knowledge from parents and students who have had experience with access arrangements to create a resource which provides a visual representation of the purpose of access arrangements, so that relevant students may learn to use these effectively.

Dr Susie Bower-Brown is a Lecturer in Social Psychology in the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Social Research Institute. Her qualitative research focusses on LGBTQ+ identities and diverse family forms, and her PhD research explored the experiences of trans and non-binary adolescents and parents. Dr Bower-Brown intends to create a short, animated video that depicts the findings from her study with trans and non-binary parents to be shared with practitioners, as research suggests that many of them lack understanding about the identities and experiences of trans and non-binary parents. Practitioners would benefit from the project, and as creating an informative and accessible video has the potential to decrease stigma, so the trans and non-binary parenting community would also benefit from the activity.

Output

• Improving inclusivity in fertility clinics

Dr Rosanne Esposito is an Associate Professor (Teaching) based at UCL Centre for Inclusive Education in the Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE. She is the Programme Leader of the National Award in SEN Coordination Postgraduate Certificate. For her doctoral research, Dr Esposito has conducted a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of an oral language intervention for children aged eight to 10 years with identified language comprehension difficulties. The fellowship project aims to develop a joined-up approach to embedding good practice in oral language learning and to strengthen the links with Inner London schools. It seeks to draw on the knowledge and expertise of families and practitioners to co-produce resources that can be shared widely within the community to increase engagement and improve outcomes for all children.

Output

• Developing a framework for inclusive teaching in Ecuador

Simon Eten is currently a postgraduate teaching assistant in the department of Education, Practice and Society at the IOE. Simon’s PhD and research interest is in the field of Global Citizenship Education and Internationalisation in higher education articulated within critical discursive frameworks. His activity is a workshop that builds on recommendations from a recently UCL Grand Challenges-funded published report on Cultures of Decolonisation. The project aims to engage Higher Education policymakers and practitioners on how they might integrate themes on decolonisation in their activities and engagements, drawing on recommendations from the report. Beyond the workshop, it is expected that the engagement will inform doctoral training and researcher development more widely.

Outputs

• Cultures of Decolonisation in UK Higher Education
• Roundtable discussion event

Dr Jie Gao is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Teacher and Early Years Education (CTEY) and a Lecturer at the Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment, IOE. Dr Gao’s current research projects focus on participatory research with young children in Early Childhood Education and continuing professional development for teachers. Her activity will be based on an ongoing project which explores how to engage socio-economically disadvantaged families in education research. Informed by research findings, the long-term goal is to set up an online network platform to connect researchers with schools, NGOs, local authorities and individual families for the purpose of promoting participation of under-represented families in education research. The expected outcomes for the fellowship include the setting up of a website for the network; and holding an online launch event to introduce this initiative. 

Outputs

• Promoting the participation of under-represented families in research
• Research findings

Min Ji Kim is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Education, Practice and Society at UCL Institute of Education. Her research interests include issues relating to student happiness and wellbeing, the role of international organisations and transnational corporations in education policymaking, and future and sociotechnical imaginaries of education. Through this fellowship, Evelyn plans to develop digital resources on student happiness and wellbeing that benefit teacher educators and teachers in South Korea. Central to these resources would be the school-level actors’ first-person narratives on the matter of enhancing student happiness and well-being so that their experiences and perspectives inform future practices within schools and policy developments.

Outputs

• Promoting student happiness and wellbeing in schools booklet
• Promoting student happiness and wellbeing in schools infographic

Dr Alessandra Palange is an Honorary Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Assessment, IOE. Dr Palange is building upon her doctoral research, which investigated Muslim education and activism in online spaces, and has also developed a new research project in the areas of faith education, participatory democratic engagement and environmental activism. Her project will benefit research participants from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the climate movement, such as people from minority ethnic and religious backgrounds, as the educational materials and co-design workshops devised as part of the fellowship aim to help community members connect with each other and co-design environmental initiatives as a community. She plans to work closely with workshop participants after the workshops if they wish to build community capacity to run these environmental initiatives by developing a peer support network to share skills, tools and opportunities for local and concerted local initiatives and/or national campaigns.

Output

• From Global Solidarity to Local Action: Co-designing Environmental Initiatives with Faith and Community Groups in the UK

Dr Silke Zschomler is a Research Fellow at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Social Research Institute, IOE. She is a PI on the ‘Developing (language) learning opportunities for precarious migrant workers at HE institutions – charting possibilities, challenges, and recommendations for policy and practice’ project (funded by BERA). For the Fellowship, she is planning to deliver impact activities in collaboration with the project participants to amplify the voice and increase the visibility of precariously employed cleaning staff as well as to provide a versatile platform for engagement for staff, students, and precarious migrant workers. This will include an exhibition/intervention, a website featuring an online gallery of project photographs and an ‘information exchange event’, working towards the development of a culture and practice of social responsibility around improving precarious migrant workers’ rights, inclusion, and wellbeing at HE institutions.

Output

• Developing (language) learning opportunities for precarious migrant workers at higher education institutions

We are delighted to introduce our new cohort of IOE Early Career Impact Fellows. The new award holders are as follows.

John Connolly is a lecturer in Secondary ITE in Science specialising in Physics. Prior to working at IOE, he was a teacher for 10 years in a London school. He is currently studying for a PhD at IOE, seeking to explore how pupils' agency is exercised during physics lessons and, in particular, the anxiety that pupils experience during these lessons. As part of his Fellowship project, John wishes to work with physics teachers at secondary school to investigate how to mitigate pupils' negative emotional responses in physics and science in school. More about John

Output

• Overcoming anxiety about physics in schools

Dr Anna Cook is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research. Her research explores psychological and social factors influencing teachers’ thoughts and beliefs about inclusion. Her current project proposal seeks to understand the main influences on early career teachers’ (ECTs') conceptualisations of neurodiversity and obstacles to teacher agency in the enactment of inclusive practice. She plans to use the Impact Fellowship to increase opportunities for meaningful engagement and co-production with practitioners and communities representing neurodiverse groups. Her aim is to impact policy and practice through accessible dissemination of findings and co-created materials that help ECTs respond to the diverse needs of learners when they transition to complex learning environments. 

Dr Katie Gaddini is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Sociology at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Social Research Institute (IOE). She is also an affiliated researcher in the University of Johannesburg's Department of Sociology. Dr Gaddini is currently a Social Science Research Council Fellow (2021–2022) and is conducting ethnographic research on evangelical Christians and politics in the US. Through this research, she has gained a keen understanding of what political issues matter to evangelical Christians and how their faith impacts their political beliefs. During her Fellowship Dr Gaddini plans to create an executive report to deliver to Christian audiences and host a knowledge exchange (KE) stakeholder meeting with leaders of Christian organisations.

Outputs

• New book examines why single women are leaving evangelical churches
• Evangelicals and Politics in America Today

Dr Zoe Gallant is a cognitive neuroscientist in IOE’s Department of Psychology and Human Development and member of the newly founded Motor Executive Cognitive Interaction (MECI) research lab. Her main area of research interest is in the role of the cerebellum in cognition, particularly in relation to theories of ageing. Cultural differences in attitudes towards ageing are often unaccounted for in healthcare. Through this Fellowship Dr Gallant plans to work with older adults from diverse backgrounds to raise awareness of the cognitive health benefits of coordinative exercises, and share lessons learned about attitudes to ageing with healthcare providers. Her ultimate aim is to design a screening tool and intervention to prevent cognitive decline that is sensitive to diverse needs.

Polly Glegg is a teacher educator in the Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment at IOE. Her research interests include teacher education, teacher educator development and business education. Polly is currently writing up her doctoral research, which explores the characteristics of effective workplace learning environments for trainee teachers completing employment-based, or salaried, initial teacher preparation. Through her Fellowship project she will work with teachers and school-based teacher mentors to craft key messages that communicate her findings to audiences in schools, with clear proposals for action. She will develop a digital resource and plain language summary of these messages, with the intention that mentors and policy makers, respectively, will engage with her findings and act to improve the learning experiences of salaried trainee teachers.

Output

• Mentoring on the Teach First Training Programme

Dr Sinead Harmey is a Lecturer in Literacy Education, Reading Recovery National Leader, and co-leads the research and dissertation modules for the MA programmes in Early Years and Primary Education. She is based at the International Literacy Centre and much of her research to date has focused on understanding more about early writing development and supporting evidence-based practice, with a specific focus on review methodologies. Her most recent review, published in Educational Review, co-authored with Professor Gemma Moss was part of the ESRC/UKRI funded Duty to Care and Duty to Teach Project. In this study, they considered what learning there was from other unplanned events like hurricane Katrina for schools in the context of COVID-19, namely the need to focus on care and community – not learning loss. In her Fellowship project she proposes to work with education professionals to co-create a resource that combines their reflections on the research findings and their own experience and to launch this resource via a research to practice webinar.

Output

• Learning from Learning Disruption

Dr Catherine Jones is a Research Fellow at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, Social Research Institute, and is part of the research team for the ‘Young Adults Study’ (PI Associate Prof Sophie Zadeh). The project explores well-being, identity and social experiences among donor-conceived people in collaboration with the Donor Conception Network. Her broader research interests include parent and child adjustment in different family forms, assisted reproduction, and primary caregiver fathers. Through the Impact Fellowship, she wants to focus on creating educational resources that would benefit adolescents aged 16–18 and teachers, creating video clips that will communicate research on donor conception for this audience.

Output

• Assisted reproduction: a short educational film

Francesca McCarthy is a final year PhD student in the Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment and also works as a PGTA on the BA Education Studies programme. Having worked as a secondary school teacher within an academically selective local authority, Francesca’s PhD research examines the lived experiences of pupils who fail the 11+, exploring how their stories reveal issues pertaining to social reproduction and social injustice. During this Fellowship she intends to hold workshops to facilitate dialogue between different stakeholders in the field of academically selective education. Agreed responses and actions to address key issues identified during these discussions will be used to create an infographic illustrating young people's perspectives on this matter, so that their voice informs practice and policy developments.

Output

• ​​​​​​​See What I’m Saying?

Dr Zoe Moula is a Research Fellow at IOE. Her postdoctoral fellowship focuses on an AHRC-funded project titled ‘Eco-capabilities: Supporting children’s wellbeing through participatory arts in nature’. She is also a research fellow and EDI co-lead at the Medical Education Innovation and Research Centre (MEdIC), Imperial College London, where she conducts studies related to authenticity, belonging, and the inclusion of arts and humanities in the medical curriculum. As part of this Fellowship, Dr Moula aims to raise UK Parliament’s awareness of the importance of engaging children and young people with sustainability issues across the whole educational spectrum. Through a policy briefing and stakeholder engagement event, the aim is to promote ‘Eco-capabilities’ to policy makers, ensuring development of ‘Eco-capabilities’ into UK schools.

Output

• Eco-capabilities

Joanne Nicholl is the programme leader for MA Education (Science) and teach on the Foundations of Science Education module and the PGCE Secondary Science programme at IOE. Research findings from her PhD inform pedagogies that encourage students to connect and relate to their local environments, as well as help empower students to realise the world is ‘beyond human’. In her Fellowship activity, she will work with Kew Gardens and a secondary school, so that PGCE students gain training from IOE and Kew about how to teach in outdoor areas. After this, the PGCE students will plan and teach the students from the Secondary school. She hopes the research and activity will inform and guide Kew educators, as well as be used to support science teachers with ways in which they can enhance the experience for their students once they are back in the classroom.

Dr Anna Romualdez is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Psychology based at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE). She currently teaches on the MA Special and Inclusive Education programme at IOE and is involved in research for Autistica’s Discover Autism Research and Employment (DARE) project. Mel plans to hold a public panel discussion about employment and autism disclosure, featuring autistic speakers who will share their lived experience with a wider audience. Autistic people may benefit from hearing these stories and knowing that they are not alone and employers of autistic individuals may recognise how difficult disclosure can be and take steps to support their employees through this process, thus improving the employment experiences and outcomes of autistic people.

Output

• Perspectives on employment for autistic people

Dr Claire Forrest, Department of Learning and Leadership – Dr Forrest is a Research Fellow on a Nuffield funded randomised controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the efficacy of an oral language intervention called ‘Talking Time’ (PIs: Professor Julie Dockrell, Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE; Professor James Law, University of Newcastle and Dr Sandra Mathers, University of Oxford). This project targets nurseries in areas of high social deprivation in London and Teesside and trains nursery staff to support language development in children aged three to four years.

She plans to use the Impact Fellowship to provide resources to the parents of nursery children in Tower Hamlets, the most deprived borough of London. Together with parents, she will co-create a resource to share knowledge about language development and parents will become ‘Communication Champions’ to ensure that language supporting skills from the ‘Talking Time’ project are embedded within the local community.

Outputs

• Launch event, 21 August 2021
• @CHATProject_IOE on Twitter

Dr Lauren Hammond, Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment – Dr Hammond is Lecturer in Geography Education, co-leads the PGCE Geography and convenes an undergraduate module for students in UCL Geography department, ‘Geography Education’. She is committed to researching with, and for, children and her research straddles the fields of children’s geographies, children’s rights, geography and education. 

Her project will focus on schools in London and Glasgow that serve communities with over 50% of children living in poverty. Using participatory methods, Lauren will engage children in her research, to develop their knowledge of their rights in education and everyday life. She will also collaborate with their teachers, developing their knowledge and skills in research. The project aims to contribute to debates in children’s rights and children’s geographies through examining the intersections between policy, place, education and lived experience.

Dr Jessica Massonnie, Department of Psychology and Human Development / Department of Learning and Leadership – Dr Massonnie is a Research Fellow working across the Department of Psychology and Human Development and the Department of Learning and Leadership at the IOE. Her work focuses on understanding how we can best help children to thrive, by considering the influence of the home and classroom environments on their learning and development. She is part of the team on the GCRF UKRI Action Against Stunting project.

Dr Massonnie leads discussions with partners in India, Indonesia and Senegal to profile access to quality preschool education in each country. This work feeds in international debates about how best to balance comparability and the respect of cultural diversity in educational assessments. As part of the Fellowship, she plans to create an infographic summarising the contextual factors and challenges at play when measuring education provision and educational quality across countries, as a helpful tool for policy stakeholders.

Output

• Infographic on Action Against Stunting launch event, 23 November 2021 

Dr Meghna Nag Chowdhuri, Department of Education, Practice and Society – Dr Chowdhuri is a Research Fellow and lead researcher for the ‘Primary Science Capital Teaching Approach’ project (PI Prof Louise Archer). This project focuses on developing a social-justice oriented primary science teaching pedagogy. Her research interests include primary mathematics and science education, teacher professional development and issues of equity and social justice.

The project aims to benefit teachers, school leadership, policy makers and STEM education networks. Through the Impact Fellowship, she wants to focus on supporting Initial Teacher Education providers, co-creating infographics that can communicate and translate her research findings for this audience. 

Outputs

• Handbook and infographic
• @primaryscicap on Twitter

Dr Georgia Pavlopoulou, Department of Psychology and Human Development – Dr Pavlopoulou is Lecturer in Psychology and Mental Health and founder of the Group for Research in Relationships And Neurodiversity (GRRAND). She is also the Anna Freud Centre lead autism mental health practitioners' trainer as well as a UKCP trainee psychotherapist at Newham talking therapies service. 

She is committed to creative participatory health and educational research, co-produced with community members. Her recent collaborative work shares interesting ideas for improving sleep routines that come directly from autistic teenagers employing an experience sensitive (Lifeworld) framework. School mental health leads, educational mental health practitioners, clinical mental health NHS staff and parents will benefit from the digital material that will be co-created with autistic young people as part of this Fellowship, to communicate key messages about autistic young people's sleep.

Output

• Leaflets

Dr Rhiannon Thomas, Department of Culture, Communication and Media – Dr Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow on the Science Learning+ project, ‘Move2Learn’, based at the UCL Knowledge Lab. Her research explores how embodied learning theory and research on gestural communication can help inform the design of STEM learning experiences for children, and in turn help support multimodal forms of discourse around these. 

As part of the Impact Fellowship, Dr Thomas intends to run workshops for practitioners in both formal and informal STEM education settings, aiming to create a network of practitioners and academics with a shared interest in broadening children’s engagement in STEM by translating embodied learning theory into real world settings.