Research news

Following the recent Reading Together Day initiative, the OU’s Reading for Pleasure programme, led by Professor Teresa Cremin, has partnered with The Reading Agency to launch a Teachers’ Reading Challenge this summer. Due to launch on 14 August, the initiative aims to create a community for teachers to share their thoughts and recommendations on children’s literature.

A new landmark citizen science project – COVID-19 and Me, has been launched on the OU’s citizen science platform, nQuire. Delivered in partnership with The Young Foundation, the project aims to capture the social impact of coronavirus on individuals and communities across the UK.

John Oates, Professor of Developmental Psychology, is lead author for the new guidance entitled ‘Research  Ethics Support and Review in Research Organisations’, which launched this month.

Dr Kristina Hultgren has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, for over £1.1mn, to explore why the use of English as a teaching language in non-English-speaking European countries is increasing, despite students struggling to understand it.

Shaped by research from Professor of Social Policy Research Dr Lesley Hoggart, and Senior Research Fellow Dr Victoria Newton, The Open University (OU) has partnered with sexual health and wellbeing experts Brook in delivering an online course supporting teachers in providing abortion education in schools. The free training is designed to improve the knowledge and confidence of those teaching about pregnancy decision-making and abortion to young people aged 13+.

Dr Mary Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care, has used the knowledge, expertise and networks developed during her twenty years of carer research, to spearhead The Open University’s (OU) innovative new Carers Scholarship Fund, the first of its type in the world.

Associate Lecturer and Honorary Associate, Dr Katharine Jewitt has been recognised in the Edtech 50 2020 Yearbook as “one to watch” for her research and work in using virtual reality in work-based learning.

The Open University’s Children’s Research Centre (OUCRC) has launched a report ‘informed by children’ to mark the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The findings will shape two books by Amnesty International UK (AIUK) to educate and empower children and young people.