Education in Practice Network

Lindsey Compton, Associate Professor in Genetics from the School of Biosciences comments on embracing educational research for academics from a STEM background (and beyond!), after an event of our Education Research and Scholarship Network on 30 October 2025.

Over the years as University educators, we come to know our own students the best! What works (or doesn’t work!) well for them in our context? How do they think and respond to the content we deliver as we teach the subjects we know and love? How do different approaches land or don’t land with our students to help them to engage and progress? So, what better setting in which to trust our own intuition as to what education research questions are the best ones to ask right now to improve the student experience in a data-driven way? Education research is for everyone who wants the educational experience of their students to be the best it can possibly be, so believe in your ideas and if it is new to you then do enjoy delving into the exotic world of social science!

Here are my top five tips for fellow academic scientists from a STEM background who are thinking about taking the plunge into education research:

• Be proud of your educational enhancement work and shout about it from the rooftops! In our disciplinary contexts, it can be all too easy to feel like our worth is recognised only through the research income we generate. But perhaps the most valuable contributions we make are not the ones we can easily measure! You will always remember the priceless moment where your students have really valued the difference you made to their special days at university.
• Revel in the joy in discovering new research methods! Like a kid in a sweetshop, I discovered methods such as collaborative autoethnography and will now be using it to develop insights into programme leadership. The bread-and-butter methods used in education research can seem exotic and even other-worldly to STEM practitioners!
• Get involved in the workshops, seminars and communities of practice organised by the Educational Development team. When the emails are piling up, it can feel difficult to justify the time spent away from your day-to-day work, but you will be glad you did! Most importantly – you deserve to make space for your own professional development. It can be really nourishing for the soul to connect with colleagues in different disciplines, share experience and stories, get inspired and maybe even identify opportunities for future collaboration!
• Work on what matters to you! Once you have a project in mind, find like-minded people to work with who care about the same things. And definitely invest in finding collaborators who have experience with the approaches you want to use or the relevant theories.
• Stay in your lane! There are different “levels” on which we might engage with educational research. Find the level that is within your scope of experience. If you are aiming to develop or enhance a new theory that will change the way we conceptualise or understand an aspect of learning, that is wonderful! But for many academics, practice-based research will feel much more accessible and will enable you to innovate to improve what you do based on observations from your own context – and who doesn’t want that!

For a more in-depth exploration of the journey into education research, you can access the seminar recording here: ‘Stepping into the unknown – Education Research and some of its quirks.’ (Sharepoint-UoB staff only).

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