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Abstract
This paper reviews the intentions and strategies adopted by the UK's Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) in its attempts to maximise the impact of its research portfolio. The Programme's early commitment to user engagement and to an ‘interactive, iterative, constructive, distributed and transformative’ impact strategy is described. The specific outputs and initiatives of the Programme are considered in relation to three issues – the transformation of findings beyond abstract academic forms; the authentic engagement of users; and the exploitation of ideas which are culturally and politically current. From TLRP experience, it is argued that such work requires significant resources, technology, imagination, expertise and time. The paper concludes with a call for substantial, long‐term investment in an appropriate infrastructure to maximise the impact of research in education.
Acknowledgements
For constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper, I am grateful to the two referees who acted for the Cambridge Journal of Education, to Mary James, TLRP's Deputy Director, and to Martin Ince, the journalist who has shared his expertise with TLRP for some years. Numerous colleagues at ESRC have facilitated the work and maintained an exemplary determination that social science should ‘make a difference’. We believe that TLRP has drawn on the energy of over 700 researchers over the years and many more practitioners and policymakers. The things described in this paper would not have been possible without this collective commitment.