Research areas

CAPE: Context, Agency, Place & Education

The Context Agency Place and Education – CAPE -  Research and Knowledge Exchange Group is grounded in Plymouth Marjon University’s coastal-rural and coastal-urban place, positioning its focus firmly on context and the way this relates to agency in both formal and informal education settings.

Two coherent themes frame our research and knowledge exchange (RKE) portfolio in CAPE:

1. Pedagogy and Innovation – this theme applies to the education of children, young people and adults, with a particular focus on promoting and developing innovative approaches to learning. Examples of existing RKE within this theme include outdoor learning, inclusive practice and maths and oracy curriculum development.
2. Professional Learning and Educational Organisational Development – this theme focuses on informing both transformative practice and policy reform, spanning formal and informal settings, including Youth Work, schools and higher education. Examples of existing RKE within this them include transformative evaluation in Youth Work, conceptualising Educational Isolation to understand place and educational inequity and professional learning for early career teacher retention.

The two themes cohere around an emphasis on professional practice in the UK and internationally and support us achieving impact by developing context-rich professional networks and research active partnerships.

CAPE is committed to a the following practices:

• An inclusive and collaborative research culture focused on professional practice;
• Building capacity for research and scholarly work that has impact or benefit to/for education;
• Focused and interdisciplinary research at local, regional, national and international levels;

CAPE capitalises on expertise and understanding across the broad membership of the group, which includes academics, practitioner researchers, postgraduate research students and expert education professionals. We have a flourishing Teacher Education Partnership that is a key element of CAPE. We also have Visiting Professors in Education of international standing in their areas who contribute significantly to the developmental activities e.g. seminars, lectures, mentoring etc. of CAPE. The education experience that supports CAPE is significant and allows us to offer PhD supervision across the themes of the group.

We welcome approaches from any educational organisations, bodies or individuals that would like to discuss working with academic researchers that understand and have experience in both formal and informal education contexts. Please contact us by email either at research@marjon.ac.uk or via the CAPE Director. You can also get in touch through twitter @CAPE_Marjon We would love to hear from you and work together to make a difference in and for education.

Find out more below about some CAPE research and knowledge exchange projects:

Coastal Schools

Educational Isolation: A challenge for schools in England

The impact of Youth Work in Europe

Transformative Youth Work 2018: Developing and Communicating Impact

Maths for the Millions

Plymouth Oracy Project

ECF Book Launch Panel Discussion

CAPE Director: Professor (Dr) Tanya Ovenden-Hope PFHEA, FSET, MCCT

CAPE Co-convenor: Dr Jon Ord

CAPE Co-convenor (ECR): Lee Ballard

CAPE Masterclass recording - 16 March 2022

Full event recording 16 March 2022

Masterclass in Professional Learning with Marjon Visiting Professors.  

Speakers: Visiting Professors in Education at Plymouth Marjon University and Member of Context Agency Place and Education Research and Knowledge Exchange Group (CAPE): 

Professor Gerry Czerniawski, University of East London 

Philippa Cordingley, CUREE (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education) 

Professor Stephen Gorard, Durham University 

Professor Linda La Velle, Bath Spa University 

Professor Rachel Lofthouse, Leeds Beckett University 

In all sectors of education we recognise the importance of professional development and learning in order to maintain and enhance our skills, knowledge and understanding. The Visiting Professors will be sharing insights from their expert areas to support professional learning.  

Sessions 

1000: Welcome - Professor Rob Warner, Vice Chancellor and Professor Tanya Ovenden-Hope 

1010 - 1110: Professor Rachel Lofthouse, Professor of Teacher Education, Leeds Becket University. ‘Postcards from the chalkface. How coaching can transform professional lives.’ 

During this interactive session Rachel Lofthouse will reflect on experiences of coaching through a series of postcards from teachers and school leaders. These short narratives will offer us opportunities for learning from our own and others’ practices, and from research evidence. We will reflect on how coaching has the potential to engage shape professional practices and lives. 

1130 - 1230: Prof Gerry Czerniawski, Professor of Education, University of East London. ‘Top Tips for Early Career Researchers’ 

It’s not easy being an Early Career Researcher! Establishing your professional identity, developing your independence as a researcher, teaching, competing for grants, coping with increasing levels of administration and – oh yes –developing your ‘output’ – that dreadful word so often used to describe the writing born of your research. A word that denies the creative and emotional endeavour that writing entails. In his session, Gerry Czerniawski talks through some ideas that colleagues might find useful when developing the early stages of their careers.  

1300 - 1400: Philippa Cordingley, Chief Executive CUREE. ‘Professional learning, school leadership and curriculum development; making a whole bigger than the sum of the parts’ 

During this interactive session colleagues will explore the implications of findings for a map of evidence form systematic reviews about effective Continuing Professional Development and Learning (CPDL)and its leadership. We will take two case studies of schools and consider how the main findings from the map of reviews might help leaders in those schools significantly enhance the professional learning environment and processes in those schools and then consider the implications of the results for their own context. 

1420 - 1520: Professor Linda la Velle, Professor of Education, Bath Spa University and Executive Editor of the Journal of Education for Teaching. ‘Getting Published in an Academic Journal’.  

In this seminar, you will get some insider tips about overcoming the various hurdles and gatekeepers to get your research published in an international journal. We will explore the why, what and how questions of publication and have a go at some ways of disseminating your findings to maximise impact. 

1530 - 1630: Professor Stephen Gorard, Durham University. ' How can we judge the trustworthiness of research?' 

Whether you are a user of research or an early career researcher (or both), it is important to learn early on that not all research is as trustworthy as the rest. Based on lessons learnt from conducting many structured reviews of bodies of evidence, this session invites a discussion of how all of us can judge the relative quality of evidence, how the context matters, and how research is best presented to make appropriate use as easy as possible.