IOE Insights

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You're listening to IOE Insights, the UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London.

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This is Research for the Real World, conversations about education and social science research and its impact on policy, practice, and our everyday lives.

Jason Ilagan: 00:24

What if we could listen to the lives of a generation from the very beginning? What if we could trace how early childhood, family background, neighborhood, opportunity, or lack of it? How these shape not only childhood, but adulthood. The chances we get, the talents we lose, or even the dreams that we carry or abandon. Immediately, when I think about this, I think about the UK series known as Seven Up! or 21 Up.

Jason Ilagan: 00:50

Have a listen.

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My heart's desire is to see my daddy who's 6,000 miles away.

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Bruce doesn't live with his parents either, but for a different reason. He goes to a private boarding school in Surrey. Bruce wants to be a missionary.

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I think the most important thing in the world is everyone should know about God.

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I think we should give all some most of our money to the poor people.

Jason Ilagan: 01:21

This powerful series follows the lives of 14 British children starting in 1963 and spans over fifty years, exploring the human condition and the impact of time. There were also iterations of the series in The US and Japan as well. It looked at life choices of both parents and their children, both their highs and the questionable choices, and also their environments and how it impacts them. Because for too many, basic reading or numeracy, the kind of everyday skills many of us take for granted, are simply out of reach. And when basic skills fail, the consequences indeed ripple, ranging from social exclusion, limited job prospects, health inequalities, and they can sometimes last a lifetime.

Jason Ilagan: 02:06

I'm Jason Ilagan, the executive producer of the IOE Insights podcast. In this season of Research for the Real World, we're highlighting the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, or CLS for short and the role it plays here at the IOE, but also its real world impact. CLS is home to a unique series of UK national cohort studies. Their studies follow multiple generations of people across the entirety of their lives. By being able to study a group of individuals who share things in common and monitoring them over time, researchers can track changes in their outcomes and identify potential predictors.

Jason Ilagan: 02:43

For example, they can study if one area in particular is heavily polluted and what that means and what that leads to over time. This means that there is a possibility of early interventions, better understanding of the mechanisms that contribute to disease and ultimately improved public health.

Jason Ilagan: 03:01

Our guests have been analyzing different cohort studies and they unpack some of these questions relating to nature versus nurture. So in this season, we'll be focusing on cohort studies from the fifties, that's the nineteen fifties, alongside plans to study children born this year.

Jason Ilagan: 03:17

Dr Gergo Baranyi will be chatting to Mark Quinn about longitudinal data and what that can tell us about housing quality and its impact on children's school outcomes.

Jason Ilagan: 03:27

Dr Sam Parsons will be interviewed by Dr Amy Harrison about the causes and consequences of poor adult basic skills, social exclusion and socioeconomic disadvantage.

Jason Ilagan: 03:38

And we'll hear from professor Alissa Goodman. She'll be chatting to Mark Quinn about the generation new era cohort study, which is gonna follow the lives of 30,000 children. That's right. 30,000 children born in 2026.

Jason Ilagan: 03:52

So subscribe to the IOE Insights podcast and never miss a Research for the Real World episode.

Voiceover 2: 03:59

Research for the Real World is brought to you by IOE Research Development and IOE Marketing and Communications at University College London. The series producer is Amie Liebowitz. The executive producer of the IOE Insights podcast is Jason Ilagan.

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Thanks for listening. Search IOE Insights for more podcasts from the IOE.