Coordinator: Professor Rosalind Pritchard

The Mission Statement of the School of Education is as follows:

The mission of the University of Ulster's School of Education is to empower its students, staff and associates to achieve excellence in the pedagogy and practice of education and in related areas of social science and research.

The School of Education seeks to maintain the highest standards of academic rigour in all its work, and to make a positive contribution to the development of the individual, society and the economy, both locally and globally, facing the challenges of change.

The School promotes and facilitates:

• high quality, research-informed teaching (including undergraduate, postgraduate and community and life-long learning teaching programmes);
• high quality educational and social science research and scholarship of national and international relevance and significance;
• high quality professional development and practice-based scholarship which supports and enhances educational policy and practice locally and internationally

The research of the SOE is organised into three clusters with theme leaders as follows:

Schooling and Teacher Education This theme addresses issues arising from the demographic decline of the school-going population in Northern Ireland. Some of its collaborators work on a cross-border basis and attention is also paid to the concept of the extended school. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is used as a tool to help overcome division and explore difficult, potentially divisive themes of identity and nationhood; e-Schooling and digital learning are linked to the wider purposes of schooling and cross-cultural understanding. Creative and transformative education is also a focus.

Leaders: Linda Clarke and Roger Austin.

Affiliated staff: Austin, Black, Bleakley, Burgess, Clarke, Dallat, Lambe, Loughrey, McGill, McNair, O Hagan, Parry, Uhomoibhi

Inclusion This theme addresses poverty, special educational needs, the education of offenders, gender issues including homophobia and inequalities within universities. In view of the influx of migrants to Northern and Southern Ireland, it deals with the education of non-native speakers of English and the adjustment of their parents to life in their adoptive society.

Leaders: Gerry McAleavy and Lesley Abbott

Affiliated staff: Abbott, Irwin, Li, McAleavy, Irwin, O Connor, Pritchard, Reilly, Skinner, Stringer

Education, Conflict and International Development The research themes related to this cluster include integration and segregation in education; the role and impact of faith-based education; equality and inequalities in education; Education for All and access to education;  comparative experiences of conflict and education; the relationship between curriculum and conflict (values, pedagogies, language, history teaching, citizenship, human rights education); education and minorities; the role of youth, community education; inter-generational learning; education, post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation; restorative practices; refugee education; education and fragile states.

Leaders: Alan Smith, Derick Wilson and Alan McCully.

Affiliated staff: Glenny, Hunter, Magill, McCully, McEvoy, Smith, Wilson