social and policy research institute - University of Ulster

5. EDUCATION RESEARCH
The UNESCO Centre, which works within the School of Education under the directorship of Alan Smith, has
attracted funding of £5.2 million over the five-year period from 2002 to 2007, including £1.4 million from Atlantic
Philanthropies and a further £3.8 million from a variety of sources including the UK Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC), the Nuffield Foundation, NI Department of Education, the Royal Irish Academy, the UK Department
for International Development (DfID), the European Union, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. To date the
Centre has completed more than 30 research and development projects. In a local context, projects have included
government evaluations of community relations in Northern Ireland; research into the impact of academic selection
(with QUB) that has led to plans for the abolition of the ‘eleven-plus’; research into integrated education in NI funded
by the Nuffield Foundation; the introduction of human rights-based citizenship education to the NI Curriculum for
all schools from September 2008.
The UNESCO Centre has also received funding from DfID to establish an International Development programme.
This includes the establishment of an advisory board, an inter-disciplinary network of research staff in international
development, networking activities (e.g. a lecture and seminar series), a university portal for international development
and provision of an undergraduate Minor in International Development,. Highlights this year are:
• Completion of a three-year research project on Values in Teacher Education funded by the UK ESRC
• Completion of a four-year evaluation of the introduction of citizenship education to the NI Curriculum
• A comparative EU research project on the role of education in dealing with the legacies of conflict involving
children and young people in Northern Ireland and Bosnia Herzegovina
• Establishment of an international development programme at the University of Ulster funded by DfID
• Participation in a research capacity-building project between Irish and African universities in Malawi, Mozambique,
Tanzania and Uganda funded by Irish Aid
• Participation in the editorial team that led to joint the UNESCO/UNICEF publication A Human Rights Based
Approach to Education for All
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001548/154861E.pdf
• Participation in the Inter Agency Network for Education and Emergencies (INEE) Working Group on Education
and Fragile States
• Preparation of an expert paper on Children, Education and Reconciliation as part of a series of UN papers on
Children and Transitional Justice for the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence
Other highlights of the year included the election of Rosalind Pritchard to membership of the Academy of Social
Sciences. She joint-organised a conference for the British Association of International and Comparative Education
(BAICE) at the University of Glasgow that was attended by people from over twenty nations. She completed her
term of office as Chair of BAICE, and was instrumental in establishing a BAICE prize for an early career researcher.
In another of her learned societies, the European Association for Institutional Research, she judged and presented
a prize for the best paper delivered by a younger scholar (an Austrian as it transpired). She continued her work
on gender in higher education for the Leverhulme Trust. Closer to home she published on the merger that led
to the foundation of the University of Ulster, and is a contributor to a forthcoming book on the history of the
University “The University of Ulster: Genesis and Growth”. Lesley Abbott, winner of the Brian Simon prize
awarded by the British Educational Research Association (BERA), continued her close association with BERA, twice
publishing in the widely circulated newsletter Research Intelligence, reviewing for BERA, and helping to judge its
Dissertation Competition. Roger Austin undertook a lecture tour as a visiting professor in North America
(Toronto, Newfoundland and Ontario) where he delivered keynote speeches on ICT. Funding of £150,000 for his
Dissolving Boundaries study was provided by the Department of Education to continue the programme until at least
31 March 2009 when the Education and Skills Authority is due to be set up. Two cross-border conferences were held
for participants in this project. Linda Clarke, jointly with Valerie McKelvey-Martin and others, landed a substantial
grant from the Wellcome Trust for the Forward Thinking Project which aims to encourage young people to engage
with the wider social and ethical implications of science and technological discoveries. Alan McCully presented
on the theme of school and community history in New York at the American Educational Research Association. This
was the third of a series of three papers emanating from a Royal Irish Academy research grant. Una O’Connor
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