This report is an account of a search for evidence that would address the issue of the dispersion of research expertise across the educational research system in the U.K. A variety of ways of gathering evidence were explored, and each chapter of this report covers one or some of them:

One of the handiest ways of getting started seemed to be by building a contacts database, with entries for each department rated 3a and below at RAE 2003. Senior members of all these departments were subsequently contacted in writing, and the rate of replies was of 46% (23 universities out of 50). The evidence thus collected was complemented by further Internet-based research, and it is included exhaustively in chapter 5. There is still incoming evidence, so probably the rate of replies will improve after the writing of this report.

Despite the constraints of time, some analyses of the RAE data were carried on, in an attempt to identify patterns in the following areas:

staff selected for RAE

sources of income

fields of enquiry/ thematic preferences

declared audience of research.

Areas where research expertise/ interest seemed to lie prominently in departments rated 3a and below were highlighted.

Data analysed consisted of submissions to RAE through forms RA0 (Staff), RA2 (Output), RA4 (Income) and RA5 (research groups). An impressive amount of data is still awaiting analysis, and throughout chapter 2 opportunities for further research are pointed out.

Three journals were selected for this analysis:

-British Educational Research Journal

-British Journal of Educational Studies

-Oxford Review of Education,

all within the first 50% ranks in the most recent Social Sciences Citation Index.

All articles published in the three journals from 2000 to 2003 (inclusive) were included in the analysis. A total of 328 articles were thus coded for the author’s institutional affiliation. The distribution of articles analysed over time, by UK region and by journal was crosscut with the most recent RAE ratings. Chapter 3 summarised the findings and points to areas for further research.

The Lexis-Nexis database was searched, using a set of keywords, for articles that contain evidence of public interest for research carried on institutions rated 3a and below. The summary of the findings and examples of newspaper articles are presented in Chapter 4.

The authorship of the BERA-commissioned reviews is briefly outlined.

There are several issues of crucial importance, which were outside the scope of this report, but which are well worth pointing out:

1. The need for conceptual exploration: concepts such as ‘elite institutions’, ‘research expertise’, ‘research capacity’ etc. need to be explored and challenged.
2. The relevance of RAE ratings for mapping research capacity/ expertise: if the use of RAE ratings involves the enactment of the assumptions underlying the very focus of research (i.e., the RAE itself), perhaps alternative approaches need to be sought.
3. The need for qualitative analysis alongside quantitative techniques (e.g., the potential of discourse analytic techniques for unpacking the RAE submission was not explored here).
4. The usefulness of a comparative approach and of a longitudinal analysis (along the different research assessment exercises).

Each chapter emphasizes further issues that need careful exploration. The section ‘Follow-up’ in each chapter summarizes such openings and challenges.

This document was added to the Education-line database on 21 May 2004