Impact Awards: Policy and Education

During a glittering ceremony last night in the Great Hall, the winners of the University of Exeter Impact Awards 2013 were revealed.

The impact awards celebrate the outstanding contributions researchers at the University have made to wider society.

Each award was separated into categories to showcase the particular area that they benefit.

This included research which changes the way we approach teaching and public life from a political standpoint with the Outstanding impact in Policy and Education award.

Researchers from the Centre for Research in Writing won the award for their work, Rewriting education for teachers: improving professional understanding and practice

Learning to write is one of the most important skills a young person learns – it is a gatekeeper to future economic wellbeing. Yet achievement in writing has remained stubbornly resistant to policy initiatives and professional intervention.

The Centre for Research in Writing has provided the first evidence that embedding grammar within the teaching of writing significantly increases the rate of writing improvement.

Through extensive professional development with teachers and a partnership with Pearson Education, the project has changed the professional understanding of writing tutoring and altered classroom practice.

The Centre for Research in Writing was established to promote writing research which crosses boundaries – methodological, philosophical and contextual.

Researchers at the centre believe that the history of research in writing is not one of unified thought but in reality is a multi-layered, disparate and, at times, fragmented set of understandings concerning writing instruction.

Therefore the Centre provides a forum for the sharing, development and interrogation of inter-disciplinary perspectives on writing.

Their research is not only concerned with writing but also with all aspects of language and literacy.