Cantor 9223 Cantor Building, Sheffield Hallam University or online.
Modern Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) began with plants on a farm in southern England but the first trials with human participants were in education, decades before they became an essential methodology in medicine. However, education RCTs remained relatively rare in the UK until the arrival of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in 2011. Endowed with over £200 million of public money, the EEF has since funded over 200 education RCTs in England. EEF is the education ‘What Works’ centre joining the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). Since 2011, the number of ‘What Works’ centres has expanded to 12; most of which privilege the RCT methodology within a broader mixed methods evaluation design. This session will draw on experiences of undertaking over 20 large scale RCTs involving young people (in education and other youth spaces) to discuss the RCT method, its history, strengths, limitations and future.
The session will be held in a hybrid format.