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Grant Holder(s) |
Project Title & Abstract |
Grant Status |
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Lynne Wyness |
From Practitioner to Researcher: Supporting inclusive pedagogic research engagement through structured Educational Development pathways Research-based teaching offers significant benefits for students, staff, and institutions, yet access to research cultures and opportunities remains uneven across UK Higher Education. Teaching-focused and vocationally orientated universities often employ large numbers of second-career or practitioner academics (‘pracademics’) with limited research experience and limited academic capital. This structural disparity can inhibit staff confidence in undertaking research and, in turn, constrain their capacity to embed research-rich pedagogies that are known to enhance outcomes. This collaborative qualitative study examines how structured pedagogic research pathways within Educational Development (ED) programmes support pracademics to develop research confidence, capability, and academic identity. Focusing on three Cathedral Group universities with vocational programme portfolios, the project explores how engagement in scaffolded pedagogic research influences academics’ perceptions of themselves as researchers and their confidence in teaching research skills to diverse student cohorts. Using an interpretive methodology, data will be generated through professional dialogues with Education Developers leading PGCAP programmes (n=5) and semi-structured interviews with recent practitioner academics who have completed pedagogic research projects (n=15) in each partner university. Reflexive thematic analysis will be employed to identify patterns relating to barriers and enablers of research engagement, academic identity formation, and impacts on teaching practice. |
Ongoing |
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Karan Vickers-Hulse |
Critical Conversations as a way to develop anti-racist practice This project expands a successful UWE Bristol pilot that developed critical conversations—structured, dialogic circles enabling staff to explore anti-racism and anti-discriminatory practice within Higher Education. The pilot, delivered within the School of Education and Childhood (SEAC), demonstrated significant impact on staff confidence, pedagogical awareness, and institutional processes. Following sector interest and an invitation from the University of Greenwich, this project will scale the critical conversation model to a new institutional context through a collaborative knowledge-exchange partnership. Working with Greenwich senior leaders and teacher educators, the project will co-design a programme of facilitated critical conversations informed by institutional data and local priorities. The UWE team will provide intensive facilitator training, model dialogic pedagogy, and support the creation of bespoke CPD resources that embed anti-racist principles within teacher education curricula. A mixed-methods evaluation, including surveys and reflective focus groups, will assess changes in staff confidence, awareness, and practice, alongside organisational conditions that support or constrain implementation. The project is rooted in current research emphasising the need for safe, reflexive spaces to address race, inequality and social justice in HE educator development. It aligns with national policy priorities around equality, diversity and social cohesion. Outputs will include facilitation guides, evaluation tools, sector-facing resources, and a practice-focused dissemination plan targeting SEDA and wider sector communities. By strengthening educator capability and modelling an adaptable dialogic framework, the project aims to enhance equity-focused professional learning and contribute to shaping anti-racist practice across the HE sector. |
Ongoing |
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Moonisah Usman |
Impact of Early Critical Thinking Education on Students’ Attainment and Social Consciousness: A Cohort Study Critical thinking (CT) is an essential prerequisite for success at higher education. However, it is not always explicitly taught but rather implied. Educational developers must understand how explicitly embedding CT skills as an early curricular intervention can support students’ academic attainment, critical engagement with disciplinary knowledge and future role as change agents. This project investigates students undergraduate learning trajectories coming through the ‘Critical Thinking for a Changing World’ core module delivered to Foundation Year (FY) students across seven disciplines, at the University of Westminster (UoW). The module situates CT within social justice contexts, introducing five key skills: asking meaningful questions, recognising assumptions and biases, constructing logical arguments, evaluating evidence and considering multiple perspectives. Building on previous SEDA work, our project utilises co-enquiry with students, providing novel insights into the conditions that lead to CT and social consciousness (SC) amongst undergraduates. We propose a cohort study comparing final-year students who completed the FY module, with peers who entered without Foundation support. We will co-create an instrument to measure CT and its application to discipline specific social issues, combining this with pedagogical talking circles, to capture lived experiences and opportunities for developing CT and SC across both cohorts. We will explore STEM (Biomedical Sciences) non-STEM (Architecture) student trajectories and develop an open-access, transferable guide for educational developers. The guide will inform multi-disciplinary curriculum enhancement, opportunities for classroom co-enquiry, and contribute to sector wide debates on equitable graduate attributes that centre CT and SC for graduates to be change agents. |
Ongoing |
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Julia Horn |
Brave questions, better evaluation: Strengthening PGCert evaluation practices This project arises from the shared curiosity of two PGCert programme leads, Charlotte Marshall and Julia Horn. After meeting at a SEDA-promoted evaluation event, we decided to delve deeper into robust evaluation strategies for professional development courses. Initial conversations revealed a shared passion for communities of practice, a drive for excellence, and new PGCert courses to be launched at our respective institutions during 2026-27. The synergy seemed too perfect to miss. Our third project partner, Henry Dorling, is an educational developer with expertise in applying realist evaluation methods in his academic research. Initial discussions suggest there is a rich range of tools and ways of thinking that could benefit us and the wider educational development community. Our interest lies in developing our knowledge of these theory-driven, context-sensitive evaluation methods. In this project, we will launch a community of practice to develop this knowledge. We will put ourselves forward as live case studies, designing evaluation for our respective PGCert course contexts. We will share learning through online events and capitalise on the longstanding SEDA interest in evaluation by inviting PGCert leads to share how their evaluation approaches arise from their specific context. This collegial approach aims to create the conditions for courageous programme leadership in a challenging HE climate. Our community will be a space to engage, critique and learn together. We will share our community response, alongside examples of evaluation, via a toolkit. The online toolkit will be launched at an event to be held in 2027. |
Ongoing |
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Mohammad Sakikhales |
Power, Partnership and Pedagogy in Transnational Education: Exploring How Partnership Structures Shape Teaching Practice Transnational Education (TNE) partnerships are often seen as collaborative efforts; however, they often operate within unequal structures in which curriculum authority, assessment control, and quality assurance are concentrated in the awarding institution. Although these arrangements are well documented at the policy level, less focus has been given to how partnership dynamics influence daily pedagogical practices and the professional agency of educators working across borders. This small-scale qualitative study investigates how power is experienced, negotiated, and enacted within a single TNE partnership. Through semi-structured interviews with academic staff and educational development colleagues at both the home and partner institutions, the study will explore how partnership arrangements impact curriculum adaptation, assessment practices, teaching approaches, and perceptions of professional autonomy. Special attention will be paid to how educators manage tensions between institutional expectations and local pedagogical contexts. Data will be thematically analysed to identify patterns in how power relations influence teaching practice and staff development needs. The project will culminate in the creation of a practical Reflective Partnership Toolkit for educational developers and TNE leaders. This toolkit will include diagnostic questions, prompts for structured dialogue, and guidance for fostering more equitable and pedagogically responsive collaborations. By highlighting educators’ lived experiences, the project offers practice-oriented insights to the educational development community and provides a structured resource to support more critically informed and sustainable TNE partnerships. |
Ongoing |
A member of the International Consortium for Educational Development