UK higher education increasingly demands evidence‑based, inclusive, competence‑focused teaching, while refusing to fund the research needed to make that possible.
This needs to change.
Teaching quality
Students and staff still feel the impact that the covid-19 pandemic has had on academic practice. Meanwhile, the seemingly unlimited reach of generative artificial intelligence raises profound questions on the purpose of higher education. With the additional pressures that universities face from league tables, funding constraints, and recruitment challenges, we can no longer afford the luxury to hope that good teaching comes naturally nor that students are willing to adapt to traditional learning methods. As it is, the system is broken and a new funding strategy must be urgently developed by UK research councils to support evidence-based teaching and discipline-based education research.
Embedding education research in the context of the discipline is essential. QAA Subject Benchmark Statements emphasise discipline standards as reference points for learning and teaching innovation in the context of EDI, accessibility, sustainability, enterprise and generative AI. In parallel to this, accreditation criteria from professional bodies increasingly emphasise the development of skills and graduate competencies, requiring these to be taught and assessed by discipline experts in an inclusive, supportive environment that reflects the diversity of the student body and of the society at large. This shifting focus from the national frameworks that steer quality enhancement across universities gives departments both permission and strong encouragement to modernise.
Where the system is failing
Teaching quality is a natural expectation if we want universities to strive. What do we need to meet this expectation? The answer is simple: evidence-based teaching. Obtaining the evidence relies on well-understood principles: good research design, good evaluation strategies, and good data coming from longitudinal studies and cross-institution comparisons.
None of this happens without funded research capacity. Sadly, as a recent sector‑wide analysis of physics education research shows, that is nowhere to be seen on the UK HE funding landscape.
A case in point
Let’s take a closer look. Of course, physics is not the only discipline affected by the absence of funded education research. But it is one where the consequences of poorly evidenced teaching design that does not consistently keep pace with how students learn and still relies on traditional curricula, rigid lectures and high-stakes exams, often become visible earliest. The same consequences emerge more slowly, but not less seriously, in most other disciplines.
Physics learning is highly sequential. Weaknesses in first-year mathematics and conceptual misunderstandings compound rapidly, making later recovery difficult. Suboptimal teaching and assessment design in hierarchical curricula carries serious consequences for student progression, retention, and attainment. Meanwhile, students from underrepresented backgrounds often find their study environment unwelcoming, which compounds the diversity challenge. This puts additional constraints on departments to adopt culturally relevant approaches to enhance all students’ sense of belonging and self-efficacy. If university departments are unable to adopt evidence-based strategies to design programmes and support their students, the consequences on students are real.
As a discipline, physics underpins clean energy, advanced manufacturing, secure communications and health technologies. The Institute of Physics’ evidence to Parliament in 2022 underscores physics’ economic contribution alongside its high delivery costs. Evidence-based teaching is essential and is a cost effective way to ensure every pound spent on education generates demonstrable graduate capability aligned to national priorities.
Clearly, the underlying issue is not disciplinary. In all cases, the absence of funded discipline-based education research harms the purpose of education and shifts the consequence onto students and staff.
What is needed
Credibly meeting the expectations set by accreditation bodies and good practice across the sector depends on research‑led curriculum and assessment design, and evaluation of student learning gains. That’s precisely what discipline-based education research in universities produce. Quality requires research.
This is where UK research councils come in. Currently they fund disciplinary research and doctoral training, but they do not fund discipline-based education research that determines how future graduates are educated.
As long as research councils ignore stable funding programmes that support doctoral and postdoctoral training in discipline-based education research, the pipeline of discipline-based education research evidence is broken, staff capacity is badly harmed, and promising teaching innovations stall before they scale.
What funding DBER will enable
Discipline-based education research translates disciplinary knowledge into teachable, assessable, inclusive curricula at scale. Without sustained funding for DBER, the system cannot produce the research on the “grand challenges” that require comparable evidence across institutions. The absence of DBER funding programmes limits the reach of evidence‑based practice by normalising doomed career pathways and systematically preventing credible programme design and continuous enhancement.
If the UK wants universities to deliver world‑class teaching, it must fund the research that makes it world‑class through dedicated funding schemes that match the ambition of other strategic research investments.
Research councils must act now
Undergraduate and taught postgraduate teaching is expected to be evidence‑based, inclusive, and future‑facing, but the current UK funding regime is actively preventing the development of evidence-based teaching. As we are reassessing the purpose of higher education, it is time UK research funding bodies seriously up their game and establish a robust funding system for discipline-based education research.
We cannot demand evidence‑based teaching while refusing to fund the evidence. Until discipline‑based education research is funded alongside disciplinary research, evidence‑based teaching will remain an expectation with no delivery mechanism.
The authors would like to thank Helen Heath for the thoughtful discussions that helped inform the arguments developed in this article.