The "Impact in Conversation" blogs aim to share practitioner education researchers’ work on research impact. It focuses on the processes of impact , impact and impact. They are based on the experiences and reflections by practitioner education researchers at Birmingham City University, in conversation with the series’ curator Dr Vanessa Cui.
Impact of work by our researchers from the Practitioner Education Research Group and its associated networks and collaborators is shared. Practitioner education research and researchers strive to make changes in policies and practices through our research to better the practices and educational experiences of our students and colleagues, this means often the most meaningful and effective research impact is co-created and co-developed with collaborators (e.g. other researchers, practitioners, policymakers, policy influencers).
With this in mind, the series focuses on a body of work undertaken by our researchers rather than focusing on a single project. This also reflects the longitudinal nature of meaningful impact work as it often takes time to create impact pathways and develop those networks and relationships to enable research to translate into policy and practices.
We focus on the process of research impact to aid other practitioner education researchers’ understandings and practices about research impact. The conversation between the contributors and the curator illustrates the complexity and the non-linear narratives of practitioner education research impact work.
We also highlight some of the uniqueness of practitioner education research and the opportunities and challenges that come with it when undertaking impact work. We use our researchers’ experiences as a catalyst for reflections and conversations about research impact and impactful research with other education practitioners and researchers.
While our REF case studies present the outcomes and outputs of our research work’s impact, we hope to inspire practitioner education researchers to think about research impact differently, to consider some of the uniqueness of practitioner education research and its impact, and to learn from other researchers’ experiences of doing impactful research.