Current research aims
Our current research programme, which was agreed with the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) - previously known as the DfES - at the end of 2004, has been developed to meet the following aims:
- To enhance the focus on specific policy issues of interest to the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) such as healthy schools, citizenship education, family learning, 14-19 progression and teacher training.
- To integrate understanding across the strands that are currently on-going and across methods.
- To build on the development of good communication channels with academics, policy-makers and practitioners in the WBL's general and strand-specific advisory panels.
- To take advantage of new data resources such as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the Millennium Cohort Study and new rounds of data collection in the Centre for Longitudinal Studies' 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts in 2004 including the inter-generational and literacy/numeracy assessments. Furthermore, we will continue to contribute to the specification of new data and to the identification of missing data sources.
- To communicate the result of the work to the DCSF through research reports and discussion papers and develop the academic profile of WBL by placing research papers in internationally recognised academic journals, in line with the role of building research capacity in the area.
