Karen Edge
This summer as London took center-stage for Olympic and Paralympic-related events, my family bucked the trend and stayed in London. As we broke our normal patterns in support of the seismic shift taking place in London, we worked from home and attended a few events. We also broke our ‘no television for toddlers’ rule and our 2 year-old son happily watched as the historical British sporting moments rolled on.
Our little boy was mesmerized by Mo Farah’s long distance-running, Bradley Wiggins cycling, Andy Murray’s tennis, and Jessica Ennis’ heptathlon. As Jessica, Bradley, Andy and Mo found their way into our home, our son cheered them on from a distance. Unexpectedly, this handful of national sporting heroes entered our lives and left an unanticipated yet positive and humourous legacy.
The overall life-changing influence of the Olympics on our son first became apparent on a walk home from his nursery school during the Games. At a traffic light, he stopped and forcefully – in true toddler style – refused to continue our journey home. He quietly paused and waited. Then, as traffic approached, he began smiling, bouncing, and clapping. In a state of puzzlement, I watched.
As the line of commuter cyclists stopped for the red light, my son’s wild clapping escalated and he greeted the cyclists with loud calls of ‘Yeah Bradley Wiggins!’ The hilarity of the scene, with a small boy cheerleading commuters as if they were all racing for gold medals, caused many of the cyclists to momentarily forget the toil of their commuting efforts and laugh out loud. Acknowledging Olympic concerns and critiques, and placing them on momentary hold, I witnessed quite an amazing Olympic-inspired moment.
When combined with our son’s self-initiated Andy Murray-inspired daily ‘tennis practice’ and desire to only wear what ‘Andy Murray wears’, something strange was afoot and the Olympics were the catalyst! As our friends and family were bemused with the evolution of our little one-man Olympic legacy, the researcher in me wondered: would it last?
Four months on, he is still going strong and shows few signs of post-event fatigue! However, as researchers, government officials and agencies gather evidence of the Games’ legacy, I wonder if our own personal, small-scale but influence-rich legacy, will ever make it to the evidence podium? I have also been pondering the methodological complexities of evidencing legacy both for large-scale events like the Olympics and educational initiatives and policy-driven mandates.
Attending Taekwondo triggered my receipt of regular Olympic e-surveys. Surveys first inquired about travel, seating, communication and food and transitioned over time to my perception of legacy. However, the surveys never captured the familial changes that we have endured at the behest of our son.
As the newly appointed editor of an academic journal, we receive many submissions presenting evidence of the influence of educational interventions, programmes and policies from around the globe. While these cases are thought provoking and informative, they rarely consider long term intended and unintended consequence. While multiple UK-based studies explore snapshots of any economic, housing, structural and nation-building Olympic outcomes, the purpose and methods associated with understanding legacy are worth considering.
Similar to the patterns of my Olympic survey experience, early research/evaluation questions often focus on the more structural components, followed by behavioural and attitudinal implications. Legacy is often missing or missed. The very successful longitudinal cohort-related studies aside there are clear and logical reasons for the lack of legacy-based research. The reasons exist on a continuum from a) a lack of research funding to examine the long-term effects to z) the short-term nature of most educational interventions and policies. With a new year upon us, perhaps it is time to resolve to focus on legacy and unintended outcomes as much as the intended shorter-term ones.
With thoughts moving forward to the new year, perhaps it is time to pause and consider: What if we, as researchers, scholars, practitioners and policy makers, individually and collectively decided to focus more often on understanding the more long-term, nuanced legacy of educational programmes, interventions and policies in a different way? While the answers may not easily flow, I am even willing to engage our toddler in cheering you on if needed! He may, in the least, provide some comic relief and a reminder that: 1) legacy comes in all shapes and sizes; 2) legacy is often replete with unexpected consequences; and, 3) to truly understand its influence, you need to ask the right questions. Ready. Set. Go!

Chris Husbands
London is one of the most vibrant, diverse and innovative cities in the world -for education as it is for so many other things. With 42 universities, 400 secondary schools and 3,000 primaries, where the students and pupils speak some 150 languages, London’s educational voice is distinctive and important. How better to celebrate and explore London’s education than in a festival?.
The first London Festival of Education will take place  here at the IOE on Saturday, 17 November. It is a fantastic line up.  It will bring together practitioners, policy makers, parents, politicians and pedagogues, not to mention students and children. There will be big name speakers ranging from popular authors Anthony Horowitz and Michael Rosen to Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh to the world-leading education guru John Hattie to get the neurons firing. And there will also be fun: workshops on teaching as performance by the National Theatre, a rebel teacher workshop, dance and a hula hoop troupe, not to mention the Make a Model Michael Gove stand (the real thing will lead the opening session; I wonder if he’ll take the opportunity to make a model of himself).
At no other education event this year will you be able to enjoy so rich or varied a range of speakers, debates, experiences and ideas. You can move from listening to world-leading thinkers  to looking at stunning films by secondary pupils, from debating the drivers of quality teaching to joining the ukulele sessions, from a behaviour management clinic to exploring the Raspberry Pi.
For the IOE, this festival is a new way of doing what we have always tried to do: engaging the public with exciting ideas. One of the central themes of the day is: What does an educated person look like? According to Wikipedia, the last person who knew everything was Thomas Young (1773-1823), although this is contested by some. Described as an “English polymath”, he made notable scientific contributions and made headway with deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Since then, there has been too much knowledge in the world for any one person to contain, so each individual, and society as a whole, has to make choices.
As we await the new primary curriculum, expected to be fact-packed, Michael Gove will talk about his views on the educated person in conversation with journalist David Aaronovich. We won’t leave it there, though. The conversation will be extended to everyone in the audience, as panellists Tim Brighouse – former London schools commissioner, Munira Mirza, deputy London mayor for education, Vic Goddard, from Educating Essex and Camila Batmanghelidjh add their ideas to the pot. Anthony Seldon will lead a final session exploring what qualities the best teachers share – if anything. We’ve sessions on the GCSE debate, on the role and focus of OFSTED, on the quality of higher education – in all over 70 speakers, spilling out from a main stage into debate spaces, master classes and innovation spaces. The IOE has been leading education for over a century – but we have never done anything like this before.
At the end of the day, we hope every festival-goer will feel more educated, more stimulated and glad they came. Working with our lead partner, the TES, we hope to make this entertaining and stimulating festival an annual – and unmissable —  fixture in the education year.

Chris Husbands
The former BBC education correspondent Mike Baker has died after a long, brave struggle with cancer, which, in his typical fashion, he wrote about with wit, dignity and insight in a outstanding blog.
Mike was no ordinary reporter. For education academics, journalists can be a mixed blessing: essential in getting research out to a wider audience, they also work on what appear to be crazy deadlines and convey complex ideas in ways so simplistic that the ideas become unrecognisable. Mike was different. He had an exceptional gift for not only understanding the most complex of educational ideas quickly, but also for finding language to convey them in ways which clarified and explained them succinctly – and often in ways which also made them clearer to their originator.
His commitment to education was profound. He had been a first-rate political journalist in the 1980s, before he succumbed to the lure of education. He established himself very quickly, commanding respect because he demonstrated respect, building a formidable technical expertise and knowledge. It was entirely fitting that the Institute of Education should have awarded him a visiting professorial chair: his clarity, technical knowledge and communication skills were a model for so much of what we try to do. And he was not just a commentator: a Cambridge English graduate, he returned to education himself as a mature part-time student to read for a masters degree in local history at Kingston, his local university.
Education policies are always controversial. They divide teachers, policy makers and politicians. Mike earnt the respect of all, careful with facts and passionate about what matters – the quality of what is experienced by children and young people. He was equally at ease on screen, in print and online, and was pioneering in his weekly education commentary for the BBC website. His journalistic and people skills were awesome: I was fortunate enough to see him chair a plenary session at a conference in Qatar, skilfully knitting together divergent speakers from radically different education settings and an audience from all over the world, to make a cogent and compelling session. No other journalist at that conference was able to do as well as Mike.
There was a cruel unfairness in Mike’s cancer. He was a lifelong non-smoker – he told me he had never touched a cigarette – and a keen cyclist. He fought cancer with determination, and his blog documented his commitment and determination. As he became weaker, his determination to keep going grew, and he raised money for cancer charities through his exhausting cycle marathons. He retained his professional commitment to the end: he was actively involved with education charities including the Education Endowment Fund, and his education news blog – the Mike Baker Daily was posted by him until a few days before his death – always announced on his twitter feed.
Mike Baker was a hugely impressive journalist: thorough, clear-headed, an able communicator committed to truth and understanding. He was also – in a profession not well-known for these characteristics – a thoroughly decent man. I’d known him for years and will miss him a lot. He, and the values he upheld, are a profound loss to education.

Caroline Kenny

With the deadline for submissions to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) fast approaching for higher education institutions in the UK, and increased focus on engagement, for example through the Research Councils Pathways to Impact process, it seems a good time to review what we know about research impact.

 1.     What is impact?

The REF defines impact as an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia. It includes, but is not limited to, effects on, changes or benefits to:

• Activities, attitudes, awareness, behaviour, capacity, opportunity, performance, policy, practice, process or understanding;
• Audiences, beneficiaries, communities, constituencies, organisations or individuals; and
• Any geographical location whether locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.

It also includes the reduction or prevention of harm, risk, cost or other negative effects.

Not included are impacts on research or the advancement of academic knowledge (this is assessed within the “outputs” and “environment” elements of the REF) or impacts on students, teaching or other activities.

2.     Why is it important?

Aside from comprising 20% of the 2014 REF assessment, impact is important for many other reasons. Morally, taxpayers, funders and other stakeholders have rights to research that can influence, alter and change the social world. Moreover, decision-making informed by the best available research has a better chance of benefitting, and avoiding harming, people. It also reduces the chances of public money being wasted on unsuccessful interventions.

Engaging different stakeholders also provides many benefits to researchers and universities including: new perspectives on or approaches to work; new skills; as well as ensuring research is meaningful, timely and useful.

3.     Why is it controversial? 

Concerns have been raised about the possibilities of:

• Prioritising certain types of research over others e.g. applied social research over more abstract philosophical/theoretical research.
• Ignoring the value of “blue-sky thinking”.
• Encouraging the use of narrowly focused or lower quality research in decision-making.

4.     What do we know about impact?

Getting research used in policy and practice is a complex process and we are still learning about the different ways that this happens.  From the research undertaken as part of the Evidence Informed Policy and Practice in Education in Europe (EIPPEE) project and wider work at the EPPI-Centre at the Institute of Education, we know that:

• Research is only likely to be used if it is relevant to the needs of its potential users.  To be relevant, research should be clear and easily understood, of good quality, timely and available.
• Research can be used in many different ways, ranging from directly informing policy and/or practice to the more indirect, or “conceptual” use, where it shapes attitudes, beliefs or understandings.
• Research may not have an impact for a very long time and whether it does or not depends on many factors. The nature of the research is only one of these. Issues that affect potential users of research are also important.  For example: Do they have the skills to be able to find, understand or use the research effectively? And do they work in organisations that are receptive or willing to use research?
• Most people focus on how research is packaged or communicated when trying to achieve impact. Existing knowledge tells us that this is not sufficient. Studies have demonstrated the “social” nature of research and the importance of researchers interacting with users to build relationships and trust. This not only increases the chances that research is relevant to these groups but also overcomes barriers relating to whether the research comes from a credible (and trusted) source.

Conclusion

Having an impact with research involves many factors; only some of which are down to the research itself. To increase the likelihood that research is used, we need more understanding about the different ways that research has impact and the effectiveness of different strategies to achieve it.  Evidence shows that we need to focus less on communicating research and more on developing relationships with users.  This reflects a shift from a very simplistic understanding of research impact where we just do the research and try and publish it, to one that better reflects the complexity of the decision-making process and the nature of the relationships between research and its use.