At EdCentral you can access hundreds of pieces of research to help inform your teaching practice or policy decisions - whether it's in the form of a book, monograph, literature review or research paper. Our user friendly platform is easily searchable, provides time saving summaries and is updated constantly. You can also see how other practitioners have rated research and why they have found a particular piece of research valuable - or maybe in some instances - not so valuable.
And, whilst you can simply use the EdCentral search engine to find research to support your needs, it's often useful to be aware of some of the key names and organisations in research. In this issue of This Week, we've pulled together our top list of key current sources of research - both in the UK and internationally - that we think teachers might find useful to be aware of.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) UK
Founded by the education charity the Sutton Trust with a Department for Education grant, the EEF invests in evidence-based projects which focus on tackling the attainment gap. It undertakes independent evaluations of research and interventions to raise attainment and rates this research. Its primary focus is on effective interventions that support disadvantaged pupils to aid use of the Pupil Premium - but it has broader applications too.
The Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit provides a summary of its education research projects, and offers guidance for teachers and schools on how to use resources to help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds improve their attainment.
The Best Evidence Encyclopedia (US) was created by the Johns Hopkins University School of Education's Center and is a free website funded by the United States' Department of Education. It provides educators and researchers with useful information about the strength of the evidence supporting a variety of subjects and relates to pupils up to year 11.
The What Works Clearinghouse (US) is managed by the Institute of Education Studies on Behalf of the US Department of Education WWC. It identifies studies that 'provide credible and reliable evidence of the effectiveness of a given practice, programme or policy (referred to as 'interventions'), and disseminates summary information and free reports on the WWC website. Over 700 publications and more than 12,000 reviewed studies are available.
The Washington DC based Center on International Education Benchmarking (CIEB) conducts research on the world's most successful education systems. It offers access to information, analysis and opinion on the education systems of the top-performing countries through its web portal.
The Evidence Informed Policy and Practice in Education in Europe (EIPPEE) network has developed an online facility that enables users to identify quality assured research from across Europe. It is divided into two main components: a search engine that enables multiple website searches simultaneously and a map of resources, indexed by region.