Educating teachers matters: Teacher research is good for schools?

This seminar will focus on how reductive teacher research and inquiry models can be resisted and will advocate for supporting teachers to engage critically, rooted in their own teachers and experiences with their learners. 

The session will consider restrictive and expansive mentoring models, related to enabling research. It will draw on research conducted in New Zealand and Wales, looking at how school cultures greatly influenced by head teachers, can nurture learning for teachers.

Central to this work is privileging a questioning stance and asking questions that are worth asking. This raises questions for school leaders, mentors, teachers, teacher educators and middle tier representatives: 

• How is research understood within schools? 
• How can schools be sites of research-informed professional learning for teachers? 
• How can engaging with research challenge inequities within schools? 
• How is the focus for research in schools, classrooms and with pupils determined?  

Emmajane and Caroline will examine the conflicted understandings among stakeholders about ‘research’ and its potential to impact on teachers’ practice for the benefits of learners. We will invite discussion of the issues for current policy-making.  

This event will be particularly useful for those interested in teacher education and teachers' use of research. 

Related links

• Tweet with #EducatingTeachersMatters
• Educating Teachers Matters seminar series
• Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research
• Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
• Department of Learning and Leadership