The Mathematics Education Centre is one of the largest mathematics education research groups in the UK. In the latest Research Excellence Framework, 85% of our research activity was judged to be ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally-excellent’, putting us amongst the highest of all education departments in the UK.

Our research focuses on two interest groups: Culture, Pedagogy and Identity, and Mathematical Cognition. We explore the fundamental processes involved in learning mathematics, as well as the design and evaluation of innovative pedagogy.

Academics from our centre have won national and international awards for their research and research-informed teaching practices. They connect with other specialists throughout the UK and run monthly seminars and workshops, attracting academics and researchers from across the region, which you will benefit from as a student, along with our reading group sessions.

We attract an increasing amount of external funding for our research with grants from the ESRC, the Royal Society, the Nuffield Foundation, the British Academy, Action Medical Research and the HE STEM programme. In recent years we have hosted five prestigious fellowships:

Dr Sophie Batchelor (ESRC Future Leaders Fellowship)
Dr Camilla Gilmore (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship)
Dr Matthew Inglis (Royal Society Educational Research Fellowship)
Dr Ian Jones (Royal Society Educational Research Fellowship).

Our Mathematical Education Centre's (MEC) growing international reputation has been reflected in Loughborough University's appearance in the top 250 universities in the world for education in the 2020 QS World University Rankings by Subject, and by being ranked as the fifth highest education department in the UK in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (based on the percentage of 3/4* activity).

The MEC is responsible for the University-wide Mathematics Learning Support Centre, which provides mathematics and statistics support to all students. In addition, one-to-one support for students at all levels of study is provided by MEC staff and colleagues in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. The Statistics Advisory Service is a specialist service which is in great demand, providing support for final year project students, postgraduates and staff requiring help with statistics. There is also increasing demand for support from the Eureka Centre for Mathematical Confidence which supports students with a range of neuro-diverse needs. The MEC, together with Coventry University, hosts the sigma Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in university-wide Mathematics and Statistics Support.

The Mathematics Education Centre is proud to be part of the ESRC Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) in partnership with the universities of Warwick, Nottingham, Birmingham, Aston and Leicester.