Institute of Education Research

Mission

To excel in equipping educational researchers with the requisite skills for conducting research in the fields of Education so as to inform policy and practice at national and international level.

Strategic objectives/goals of CEES IERPS

To reposition CEES to be the centre of excellence in the development, research and application of professional educational approaches in response to national and global needs the following objectives will be kept in mind:

  1. To be the leading centre educational research and policy studies in Uganda        
  2. Empower staff and students to become research desks for educational policy intervention
  3. Enhance graduate research training, supervision and educational analysis
  4. Utilise research findings in Mak/CEES to enhance community engagement/educational reforms
  5. Utilise the institute as a research locus to provide plausible solutions to Uganda’s education challenges
  6. To provide hands on training for staff students, educational researchers, educators and scholars in different  education sub systems on both experimental and metaphysical  educational research
  7. Be the centre in which dissemination of educational study findings are made.

Major Activities of the institute.

The activities at the institute will be geared towards Consolidating and Enhancing the educational Research and Profile of Makerere University College of education and External studies through quality research, dialogue and policy interventions in Education and education systems.

Specifically, the activities and mile stones achieved

  1. Establishing A Research Ethics Committee at the College of Education and External Studies Makerere University. This is in the final stages and now awaits approval of National Council of Science and Technology
  2. Resumption of the Uganda Journal of Education though funding hampered its final publication
  3. A number of projects were done under the IER and these included:
  4. Post Covid-19 Back to School Education Manuals Sponsored by MoES, NCDC, Agakhan 2020

This project involved drafting

  1. Back to School Learner’s Handbook
  2. Back to School Teacher’s Handbook
  3. Back to School Parents’ Handbook
  4. Back to School, School Leaders’ Handbook
  5. LMG TTIs Project: Guidelines for Leadership, Management and Governance of Teacher Training Institutions in Uganda MoES & UNESCO 2021. This is a project aimed at establishing the state of leadership and management in all Teacher training institutions in Uganda CEES inclusive. It is a 50,000 US Dollar Project
  • The ADAPT Consortium comprised of 3 organizations; Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GESCI), Makerere University’s College of Education and External Studies (CEES) and The University of Notre Dame’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC) The project is Sponsored by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) under the Knowledge and Innovations Exchange (KIX) program to conduct research on the topic,  The Adapting assessment into policy and learning (ADAPT): Adolescent 21st Century skills in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. It is 2 years’ project starting June 2021.
  1. IDEP project: Investing Data and Evidence to Inform Education Policy in Response to The New Normal Caused by Covid 19 Pandemic (IDEP –Project 2020) Mak RIF –Ug Govt

Challenges:

  1. IER has no budget and this constrains its proposed activities
  2. It is not yet fully functional with no staff save the director

Recommendations 

  1. IER funding is a must
  2. Need for full operationalisation
  3. Need for staff and establishment