Measuring up? Metrics and research assessment in UK teacher education

Abstract

This paper offers a multi-dimensional analysis of publication outputs from teacher education research published in the UK between 2000 and 2013. The analysis draws on a sample of 727 articles published in 39 journals. Using metrics data extracted from Elsevier's Scopus database, the analysis outlines the distribution of outputs and explores characteristics associated with productivity and influence. Conceptual and methodological issues with the enumeration of research quality and impact are identified, including quality criteria, citation practices and coverage in leading bibliometric databases. Several contextual factors are taken into consideration. These include author affiliation at the time of publication, university research ranking, Education subject ranking and the size of intake for programmes of initial teacher education. The analysis confirms an association between publication productivity and institutional type, with an inverse relation between large-scale engagement in the practices of teacher education (represented by student numbers) and the production of research on teacher education that is judged to be of high quality. This has implications for how the activities of university Schools of Education are valued and the prospects for research-informed teacher education in the UK.

Initial Teacher Education for Inclusive Education: A Bibliometric Analysis of Educational Research

“…In the domain of education, there are a number of bibliometric studies. For instance, in the field of teacher education, we identified some works focusing on various aspects such as foreign language teaching [24], teacher education research [25][26][27], classroom dialogue [28], digital competence of future teachers [29], teachers' motivation [30], etc. In IE, there are few bibliometric works that address issues such as the research in the field, either globally [31,32] or nationally [33,34], the use of technology in response to diversity [35], etc.…”

Research capacity in initial teacher education: trends in joining the ‘village’

“…However, the relationship between universities and education research is becoming increasingly precarious. For example, the English government's main education research funding body, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), funds a narrow range of research, which has been described as overly instrumentalised, and reliant on a narrow range of research methodologies such as Randomised Control Trials (Ellis, Steadman, & Trippestad, 2018;Godfrey, 2017;Hulme, Wood, & Shi, 2020;Turvey, 2018;Turvey & Pachler, 2020). The types of research funded and produced by the EEF has been described by Turvey (2018) as dehumanising because of its overemphasis on data, and lack of recognition of the human dimension of education.…”