Research capacity building Scottish style: The Applied Educational Research Scheme in action

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Abstract

The Applied Educational Research Scheme (AERS) is a £2 million five-year programme aimed at developing educational research capacity in Scotland. It is jointly funded by the Scottish Funding Council and the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). The background to the establishment of AERS was described by Steve Baron, Programme Co-ordinator, in an earlier edition of Education in the North. Key features of that background may be summarised as follows:

• the recognition of the need to invest in educational research capacity in Scotland in the context of the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise in which no Scottish education outlet was rated 5 or 5*; furthermore, only four of the seven universities with faculties of education were rated so as to receive research funding;
• the encouragement by the then Scottish Higher Education Funding Council of research collaboration among Scottish universities;
• the opportunities to enhance educational research presented by the mergers of all the former teacher education colleges with universities;
• a rethinking of the relationship between policy and research within the Scottish Executive Education Department to encompass concepts and theories to help inform policy development, as well as more traditional interests in the evaluation of policy initiatives and in the 'what works' agenda.

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