This subtheme encompasses a range of work in the Strathclyde Institute of Education targeting professional learning and agency through research. Positioning educational professionals as researchers, it encourages and explores the process of ‘systematic enquiry made public’ (Stenhouse 1981) across roles, contexts, ages and stages of the education system, including:
- Colleagues in the early childhood, primary, secondary, special, college and higher education sectors
- Student teachers, classroom teachers, mentors and leaders
- Educators located in island, rural and urban environments locally, nationally and internationally.
Common is the privileging of partnership approaches between the university and professional communities using collaborative and creative approaches to bridge methodology and pedagogy in such a way as to co-construct a dynamic and useful dialogue that supports improved practice and learner outcomes.
Members of this subtheme identify themselves as teacher researchers. They foreground their learning about the endeavour of teaching and learning while working with others. The aim is to practise what we preach and create authentic partnerships whereby knowledge is co-constructed and shared collaboratively. The group aligns with a social justice and democratic intent and as such foregrounds the ethical prerogative of professionals engaging critically with their practice with the aim to better understand their classroom and the learners in their care.
Projects in this subtheme may be research, knowledge exchange or teaching orientated representing areas of activity within and across the group whereby teachers and other education professionals engage with research as part of their professional learning aligned with the Scottish National Model for Professional Learning and the GTCS Professional Standards. This sub-theme particularly extends work out of the Supporting Teacher Learning PG Cert, which has GTCS Professional Accreditation, but also includes approaches used on our Doctorate of Education (EdD), ITE programmes, and Into Headship qualification, as well as approaches used within our undergraduate and postgraduate research projects and dissertations.
Activities in this subtheme target how and why we support teachers and other educational professionals to engage in and with research. It will propose and empirically explore theory, methodology and pedagogy for supporting teachers in professional learning through research and target the potential impact of such an approach. A practitioner enquiry approach will be a fundamental core aspect of this sub-theme and the activity it represents but will not be the only approach included.
Lead
Subtheme members