Job purpose

This role involves delivering research relating to race and inequalities in educational outcomes in the UK. You will be working as part of a collaborative team to deliver a project investigating the school exclusions process, the impact this has on families and pupils and how affected families are able to appeal against exclusion.

The project combines secondary and primary research. The researcher in residence will lead on delivering new prospective qualitative research. This will involve closely observing a cohort of excluded pupils and their associated families as they navigate the exclusion and appeal process. You will rigorously document how the appeal process operates and capture data on cases and their outcomes as they develop.

You will need strong relationship building skills as the role will be embedded within an existing team of caseworkers and pastoral support workers. You will work closely with the team over the course of a school year, and may have experience either in conducting ethnographic research, working as a caseworker or as an embedded researcher within a service such as social services, child protection or rehabilitation services.

While CEN is the employer of this post, the role is set between CEN and the Runnymede Trust and you will be responsible for reporting to senior leadership within CEN as well as working as part of the research team at the Runnymede Trust to deliver the project. In addition to project delivery, the research in residence should also develop CEN’s research approaches and support building the organisation's capacity for further research work.

You will have responsibility for ensuring the research is rigorous and of stellar quality and to report research findings and progress on a term by term basis. Your ability to build trust and positive relationships with a diverse group of stakeholders is essential to the role, and your thoughtful approach to issues of ethics, positionality and power will ensure the research is rich, co-created and centres the experiences and voices of participants.

Responsibilities and main duties include:

• Working as part of a distributed research team, use a mixture of qualitative methods to deliver research aims and produce reports analysing and interpreting patterns and trends that examine the links between race, school disciplinary practices and the impacts these processes have on affected families.

• Develop a thorough knowledge of the services provided by CEN and capture qualitative data through shadowing a triage administrator, a number of caseworkers and the parent coordinator based within CEN, identifying key moments to stage 1-2-1 interviews with affected pupils and parents.

• Establish suitable ethical and safeguarding protocols for working with vulnerable young people. Maintain effective communication with participants and stakeholders over the duration of a school year, ensuring that ethical and safeguarding protocols are followed at all times.

• Independently deliver elements of research projects such as focus groups and interviews, ensuring milestones  and reporting requirements are met, maintained and communicated internally and to external partners where appropriate.

• Effectively document research findings over a medium term prospective research project, including regularly producing annotated transcripts and providing termly summary reports over the course of the school year.

• Work collaboratively with parent empowerment co-ordinators and engagement officers to ensure research findings inform pop up empowerment events, and other meaningful assets informing parents how to exercise their rights once a child is excluded and how to navigate the exclusion and appeals process.

• Help develop CEN’s research approaches, supporting the CEO and founders to build the organisation's capability and capacity in this area and scoping future projects.

• Represent CEN externally to share our research findings or contribute to other external events as an ambassador for CEN and our work, for example as part of funding bids. 

• Promote equality and diversity values acting as a role model and fostering an inclusive working culture.