Research
Our current research is focused on three strands that reflect three inter-related levels within personal and social life:
- Individual well-being
- Family dynamics
- Community cohesion
Each of these strands represents an important domain in which education has important effects and implications. Each also represents a set of policy areas, and there are specific if often unconnected groups of policy interests within each domain. Further information on each strand can be found by clicking on the links in the sub-menu on the left of the page.
However, the three levels also interact and none can be fully understood in isolation. We are continuing to focus on outcomes of learning that range beyond qualifications and academic achievement, these outcomes include wider and softer skills such as behavioural and emotional development, the development of good communication skills and relations with others, citizenship, healthy lives, social inclusion, social cohesion and the valuation of learning and the support of learning identities. We are also concerned with social interactions and the role of schools and other learning institutions in the lives of communities.
There are also important national and international forces that impact on the contexts and structures within which individuals learn. We also work therefore on international collaborative projects to examine these wider structural conditions and their implications for the delivery and outcomes of education.
Our projects do not just address learning in adulthood but examine it throughout the lifecourse as well. Progression through stages is an explicit focus of the work of WBL.
While some projects focus on developing the evidence base, others are concerned with developing theoretical foundations for policy and research. However, it is important to us that all our projects are policy relevant, whether directly or indirectly.
We are also developing projects that focus on specific case-studies of policy intervention, such as children’s centre, family learning programmes, or extended schools.
We are continuing to work on the development of instruments to assess the wider benefits of learning and the WBL team is undertaking both quantitative and qualitative research. It is important that WBL achieves a balance between methods at the level of the programme overall, rather than within each strand, as some methodological approaches are more appropriate to particular strands.
