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This article examines the English government’s vision for how research is proposed to lead to improvements in the system in the context of a school-led, self-improving system and rapid and sweeping legislative reforms. The debate about the role of research in the teaching profession has been sharpened by a large consultation effort in the academic community. The BERA-RSA inquiry suggests an empowering vision for teachers where research engagement informs practice and a role for schools in providing a ‘research-rich environment’. However, the government’s proposals offer a rather less empowering vision. The author of the paper contrasts a version of research-informed teaching and leadership with one where teachers are supposed to follow and be led by the evidence. The government’s education policy, especially as set out in the 2016 White Paper ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’ is analysed in relation to this position. Analysis of statements from the document are shown in the paper, and contextualised with examples from the English school system. The extent to which teacher agency is promoted through research evidence is explored. The article concludes that the government’s over emphasis on a ‘what works’/‘evidence-based practice’ model is unhelpful in achieving an improved education system. Suggestions for the role of universities and the College of Teaching in promoting research-informed practice are given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in higher education institutions offering opportunities for interprofessional learning (IPL) to their students. The literature presents a number of factors that contribute to effective IPL, including having trained facilitators that help optimise the learning process. Many of these IPL facilitators are university teachers and the literature provides us with some insight into their views of IPL. However, little is known about university teachers' views about IPL and their role in supporting students in achieving outcomes linked to IPL during their own teaching; this paper explores these areas. University teachers, working with students in Norway and England who contribute to patients' care pathway were purposively invited to join focus groups. Data collected from the teachers' conversations during these focus groups were analysed to elicit the main themes. Findings show that university teachers have a wide range of views about IPL, its potential to enhance collaborative practice and care, and their role in helping students achieve outcomes linked to IPL. A key challenge appears to be whether IPL is "worth the struggle," which emphasises the need for strong leadership in order to align pedagogical approaches in education and practice that strive to achieve agreed outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of a process evaluation for understanding randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of complex teaching interventions in a classroom setting is discussed in relation to the evaluation of the Integrated Group Reading (IGR) programme trial. This process evaluation is based on realist principles and draws on different data sources. The findings indicate that the efficacy of a classroom-based complex intervention like IGR is hard to evaluate given the nature of the intervention and its context. These findings illustrate that a process evaluation should not be seen as a subsidiary study to the experimental trial, but as an independent study in its own right as it can shed light onto the setting up and running of the trial. The paper argues that RCTs by themselves do not necessarily provide the 'best evidence' and need to be supplemented by other evaluation perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successive governments in England have regarded classroom observation as an essential tool for monitoring and improving teacher performance. Despite its importance in national policy for teacher development, the impact of classroom observation on individual teachers, and on improving quality and standards in teaching and learning, remain under-researched areas. Further education (FE) in general, and FE teachers in particular, have received sparse attention. This paper adopts a theoretical framework grounded in aspects of assessment theory to explore some of the consequences of using observation to assess, monitor and raise standards of classroom performance in the FE workforce. It draws on findings from a mixed-methods study, involving questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, conducted in 10 FE colleges situated across the West Midlands region of England. The paper concludes by situating the findings against the broader backdrop of research into teachers’ continuing professional development and, in so doing, raises questions about the fitness for purpose of prevailing observation assessment regimes in FE and the extent to which these systems are able to achieve their purported goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Performance-based management is a recurring and controversial strategy for education reform. This paper examines a nineteenth-century English experiment in paying schools by results and uses concepts from personnel and behavioural economics to understand its decline. Like many recent education reforms, payment-by-results sought to bring schools and teachers under the ‘laws of supply and demand’. The unintended outcomes of the policy, which ultimately led to its end, included narrowing of the curriculum, cheating and manipulation by schoolteachers and managers, and increased risk and uncertainty in the teaching profession. The paper begins by exploring the role of economics principles in the drafting of the policy. It continues to explore how the programme unravelled, with special attention to issues of perverse incentives, teacher motivation, risk, and uncertainty. Building on recent studies of analogous modern experiments in performance-based management, this paper finds important parallels to current policy concerns. The lessons learned address the fundamental relationship between incentives and teacher motivation and the role of economic theory in education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though there is a well-established body of research in the field of teacher professional development, it is characterised by a real dearth of any detailed historical analysis. This paper seeks to address this gap, by offering a new historical analysis of a case study of the evolution of organised teacher professional development in England and Wales during the twentieth century. Its approach is hoped to open up the wider debate and to contribute to a fuller understanding of the basis for those questions and dilemmas about teacher professional development that have long exercised teachers, professional educators and policy-makers – questions which turn on fundamental issues of priorities and purpose, funding, scale of teacher engagement, control and reach. The paper is in three main parts. Firstly, the scope of the case study is outlined with key stages in the evolution of teacher professional development in England and Wales identified. Secondly, four themes from the data which characterised this evolution are discussed. These include the restricted engagement of teachers relative to the whole teacher population; limited funding; the highly centralised control over provision for teacher professional development through Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI); and a highly selective and restrictive access to provision by teachers. It is argued that these key characteristics helped to shape a particular culture and ideology of teacher professional development which was dependent on a select cadre of elite teachers for the dissemination and modelling of what was regarded as good practice, so as to improve their colleagues’ performance – the elite excelled while the majority needed to be saved from mediocrity. The particular ideology underlying this model is conceptualised as one of ‘excellence and salvation’. Finally, it is argued that the key issues identified in this story (the restricted engagement of teachers; limited funding; highly centralised control; and ideologies of excellence) raise important generic questions for the field of teacher professional development more widely as well as framing future historical analysis of teacher professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Policy and practice responses to diversity and difference in pupil populations continue to challenge education systems around the world. This paper considers how teachers’ understandings of diversity and difference and their pedagogical responses at the local level are influenced by, and can be reconciled with, policy at the general level with its impulse for categorisation, normalcy and ‘ableness’. Two frameworks around orientations to diversity and types of pedagogic need are combined in order to examine this tension and develop possible responses. This is illustrated through the example of special educational needs as a type of difference. The paper argues that for critical, ethical and socially just pedagogies, policy needs to support teachers in acknowledging and troubling difference at the classroom level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores research-focused reflective creative partnership at the heart of Dance Partners for Creativity (DPC), a qualitative, participatory research project located in secondary school creative partnership initiatives in England. It researched how dance artists and teachers partnered as ‘external’ and ‘school’ partners respectively, to nurture creativity in students aged 11–14. The wider educational context to the research was characterised by tension between striving for excellence harnessed to performativity as characterised by Ball on the one hand, and expanding opportunities for creativity in schools on the other; the two in tension with one another as discussed by the authors of the present article elsewhere. DPC sought to open space between creativity and performativity, enabling partners to co-research and to co-lead learning in the arts. The paper explores emergent practice applying McWilliam’s concept of ‘meddling in the middle’ originally proposed in relation to pedagogy in schools. The paper suggests research-focused partnerships in DPC were characterised by ‘meddling’. It discusses stretches and challenges documented in the study, revealing ways in which partnerships were dynamic and sometimes uncomfortable, whilst offering exciting potential for change. It suggests the retrogressive current policy frame in England may benefit from leaps made possible where partners in creative learning are curiosity-driven ‘meddlers in the middle’: a productive form of reflective practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on a national study, involving a mixed-method research design comprising a randomised controlled trial (RCT), text analysis, student and teacher interviews and lesson observations. It set out to investigate whether contextualised teaching of grammar, linked to the teaching of writing, would improve student outcomes in writing and in metalinguistic understanding. The RCT involved 744 students in 31 schools in the south-west and the Midlands of England, and was a blind randomisation study. Classes were randomly allocated to either a comparison or intervention group, after the sample had been matched for teacher linguistic subject knowledge (LSK). The statistical data were complemented by three interviews per teacher and three interviews with a focus student in each class, plus three lesson observations in each class, giving a data-set of 93 teacher interviews, 93 student interviews and 93 lesson observations. In addition, the final pieces of writing produced for each scheme of work were collected. The statistical results indicate a significant positive effect for the intervention, but they also indicate that this benefit was experienced more strongly by the more able writers in the sample. The regression modelling also indicates that teacher LSK was a significant mediating factor in the success of the intervention. The qualitative data provide further evidence of the impact of teacher knowledge on how the intervention was implemented and on students’ metalinguistic learning. It also reveals that teachers found the explicitness, the use of discussion and the emphasis on playful experimentation to be the most salient features of the intervention. The study is significant in providing robust evidence for the first time of a positive benefit derived from the teaching of grammar, and signals the potential of a pedagogy for a writing which includes a theorised role for grammar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the evidence relating to how primary schools are responding to the ‘gifted and talented’ initiative in England and Wales. A questionnaire survey which invited both closed and open-ended responses was carried out with a national sample of primary schools. The survey indicated an increasing proportion of coordinators, compared with a survey carried out in 1996, were identifying their gifted and talented children as well as having associated school policies. However, the survey also highlighted a number of issues which need addressing if the initiative is to achieve its objective of providing the best possible educational opportunities for children. For example, it was found that a significant number of practitioners were not aware of the existence of the National Quality Standards for gifted and talented education, provided by the UK government in 2007, and the subject-specific criteria provided by the UK’s Curriculum Authority for identification and provision have been largely ignored. The process of identifying children to be placed on the ‘gifted and talented’ register seems haphazard and based on pragmatic reasons. Analysis of teachers’ responses also revealed a range of views and theoretical positioning held by them, which have implications for classroom practice. As the ‘gifted and talented’ initiative in the UK is entering a second decade, and yet more significant changes in policy are introduced, pertinent questions need to be raised and given consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Secondary modern schools form the focus for this paper, which explores an aspect of this topic that has received comparatively little attention: the role of external examinations in determining the character and fate of these schools during the 20-year period when they educated the 'large majority'1 of pupils in the 11 to 15 age range. Particular attention is paid to the pivotal role played by external examinations in secondary modern schools' quest for parity of esteem with grammar schools. Various functions performed by external examinations are considered and it is shown that, while some worked against the interests of secondary modern schools, individual schools were able to turn others to their own advantage. The paper ends by considering a darker side to examining, which was asserting itself as this brief period of history drew to a close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on findings from an evaluation of a pilot accreditation scheme for teachers of sex and relationships education (SRE) in England. The scheme was introduced as part of national measures to reduce rates of teenage conception. Illuminative and participatory methods were used to elicit stakeholder accounts from primary, secondary and special school teachers enrolled in the scheme, their line managers, local SRE coordinators, national officers and national assessors. Data were analysed thematically. This paper describes the process of recruitment to the scheme, competing perspectives on benefits from accreditation, factors hindering and facilitating implementation, and infrastructural support. Overall, the scheme exemplified a number of features of effective professional development for teachers of SRE in schools. A national scheme, developed in the light of findings from this pilot evaluation, is currently being implemented across England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of the methodological lessons and emerging findings of a collaborative action research network in England. The Network involves teams of researchers from three universities in working alongside school and local education authority practitioners as they explore ways of developing more inclusive practices. The analysis of these experiences throws light on the nature of the tensions between national policies for raising standards, as determined by the aggregation of test and examination scores, and polices for reducing marginalization and exclusion within the English education service. The paper also explains what has been learnt about the potential benefits of partnerships between practitioners and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the issue of recruitment of men into primary teaching, with particular reference to the early years of schooling. The latest UK statistics reveal that there are 27,000 male primary teachers and 141,000 females. However there are disproportionately greater numbers of male head teachers. The presence of men in this environment is perceived as crucial. The public discourse, then, calls for more men to function as role models and this paper examines the different voices within this discourse. It also surveys the initiatives taken by the UK government and the Teacher Training Agency as part of the recruitment drive to secure more men in the primary sector. The second part of the article presents research undertaken with female teachers. It explores their perceptions and experiences of male teachers at key stage one. Women suggest that rather than recruiting men as a group, what is needed is the 'right kind of man'. This paper considers this notion and concludes that there needs to be greater clarity within the public discourse as to the meaning of male role models and the need for more men working with young children. The voice of female teachers is currently absent from the public discourse. Given their knowledge and experience, women can offer a significant contribution to policy and should have the opportunity to be heard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents trainees' 'flight turbulence' as they negotiate the complexities that lie between 'the self' and the securing of Early Years Teaching Status in England. Early Years Teachers, besides teaching, are expected to lead improvements to the quality of provision. However, drawing on interview data, an impasse is discerned where ideas meet instrumental policy in practice. Trainees are often unable to reshape the meeting of theory, policy and practice, and struggle in finding teaching approaches which they are comfortable with ethically. Drawing on Holland et al.'s concept of 'figured worlds', it is suggested that the development of theory-informed practice should not be seen as a solitary task for the student but as a dialogic though difficult conversation involving the student, university staff and placement practitioners. Dialogism is seen as requiring persistence but as offering opportunities for beginning early years' teachers, with support from teacher educators and experienced practitioners, to negotiate the challenging spaces between policy, theory and beliefs as they seek to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct ethical professional identities for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent policy statements have urged greater use of research to guide teaching, with some commentators calling for a ‘revolution’ in evidence-based practice. Scholarly literature suggests that research can influence policy and practice in ‘instrumental’, ‘conceptual’ or ‘strategic’ ways. This paper analyses data from two studies in English comprehensive schools, in which teachers were given research reports about teaching gifted and talented students, and supported over a 12-month period, to incorporate findings into practitioner research projects of their own devising. Participant observation data, interviews and teachers’ written reports were analysed in three phases; analysis revealed that the teachers used research in instrumental and strategic ways, but only very occasionally. More frequently, their use of research was conceptual. Within this category, research influenced what teachers thought about, and how they thought. The process is theorised as a ‘long, focused discussion’, to which research contributed a ‘third voice’, in dialogue with individual teachers (the ‘first voice’) and their colleagues (the ‘second voice’). Given the dearth of empirical work on this topic, it is argued that this theory, whilst tentative, provides an appropriately nuanced framework for further investigations of teachers’ use of research evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In order to achieve the standard expected in the classroom, teachers benefit from continuing professional development that enables access to resources with which to inform their practice. Smith and Helfenbein's “Translational Research in Education: Collaboration and Commitment in Urban Contexts.” In The Collaborative Turn: Working Together in Qualitative Research (2009), edited by W. S. Gershon. Rotterdam: Sense, identified that translational research ‘creates a space for collaborative, co-constructed inquiry that values and utilises the expertise of all stakeholders involved’ (page 91). This paper presents an overview and investigation of a founding model, MESH (MappingEducationSpecialist knowHow guides,www.meshguides.org), for translational educational research and knowledge mobilisation in schools and colleges. MESH guides aim to support improved evidence-based and research-informed teaching practice, to in turn improve professional practice for better student attainment. Findings from this qualitative investigation focusing on the use of one MESH guide on the teaching and learning of spelling – in 120 Primary Schools in the South West of England, UK for curriculum development – suggest that teachers value evidence-based resources for curriculum planning and delivery. Furthermore, when resources such as MESH guides are used they do help in planning curricula and lessons and have an impact on both pedagogy, by improving opportunities for learning, and on practice, by reducing planning time. Translational research for knowledge mobilisation in education is shown to give confidence to the teacher through resources that are perceived to be ‘tried and tested’, and can therefore be ‘trusted’ to improve learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teacher educators in many countries share similar concerns as they aspire to improve education for learners and stimulate interest in further study and careers. The roles and professional development of school teachers have been researched, but little attention has been given to teacher educators. Using a small-scale, illuminative study in England and South Africa, this paper examines pedagogical implications of progression from classroom teacher to teacher educator-tutor. Systemic issues include attitudes to personal scholarship in moving to high stakes academic environments requiring research. In both countries, there were issues of student teachers’ subject knowledge and their capacity to translate knowledge for learners. South African teacher educators were concerned about student teachers’ lack of appreciation of the integrity of conceptual understanding and sequencing of topic content. Implications for the professional development of teacher educators and their role identities are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of a new inspection system in January 2012 has created new challenges for both the teaching profession and for the inspectors of education given the task of implementing it, as the new framework demands increased involvement by serving teachers and head teachers as part of the inspection process. This paper draws on evidence from a current funded research project to examine the implications of engaging current practitioners in the inspection role. It explores the professional values and skills that are required in order to successfully effect the new framework and considers whether these may conflict with professional teaching identities, thus raising the possibility of further tensions in the inspection – and governance – of education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School geography in England has been characterised as a pendulum swinging between policies that emphasise curriculum and pedagogy alternately. In this paper, I illustrate the influence of these shifts on geography teacher's professional practice, by drawing on three “moments” from my experience as a student, teacher and teacher educator. Barnett's description of teacher professionalism as a continuous project of “being” illuminates how geography teachers can adapt to competing influences. It reflects teacher professionalism as an unfinished project, which is responsive, but not beholden, to shifting trends, and is informed by how teachers frame and enact policies. I argue that recognising these contextual factors is key to supporting geography teachers in “being” geography education professionals. As education becomes increasingly competitive on a global scale, individual governments are looking internationally for “solutions” to improve educational rankings. In this climate, the future of geography education will rest on how teachers react locally to international trends. Geography teacher educators can support this process by continuing to inform the field through meaningful geography education research, in particular in making the contextual factors of their research explicit. This can be supported through continued successful international collaboration in geography education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews with 14-19 year olds in England and Wales are analysed to explore young people's perceptions of the experience of school and of alternative settings for learning such as further education colleges or work-based learning. Many experience school as oppressive, suggesting a defeasance of their rights as human beings. The paper posits that conceptualisations of childhood, rather than offering protection, may lead to vulnerability, and that in secondary schools there are negative and disabling relationships between teachers and learners. If secondary pupils are conceived as vulnerable and marginalised, frameworks to address issues of social justice and inclusion for disadvantaged groups may be relevant. A capabilities approach to assuring the well-being of young people is explored as an alternative theory within which to evaluate schooling and to adjust relations between young people and staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports research into the effect on 11-year-old pupils of introducing more cognitively challenging, practical, and interactive science lessons. Our hypothesis was that such lessons would increase the children's enthusiasm for science and their engagement with the scientific process, thereby improving educational performance. Schools in England are under pressure to raise achievement, as measured by the results of national tests. This has an impact on teaching, where revision of subject knowledge often dominates and can be particularly detrimental to more able pupils. The research was a controlled trial which took place in thirty-two English primary schools as part of a project "Conceptual Challenge in Primary Science". Teachers from 16 intervention schools participated in continuing professional development (CPD) and developed science lessons that had more practical work, more discussion, more thinking and less (but more focused) writing. The proportion of pupils achieving the highest level (level 5) in the national science tests at age 11 was compared in the matched-school pairs before and after the intervention. Focus group interviews were also held with a group of pupils in each intervention school. There was a 10% (95% Confidence Interval 2-17%) increase in the proportion of children achieving the top score in the intervention schools. The pupils and teachers reported greater engagement and motivation. These findings suggest that moving from rote revision to cognitively challenging, interactive science could help improve science education. They merit replication in other international settings to test their generalisability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the beginnings of courses of teacher training for teachers in technical and further education in England. First the development of the technical education sector and its distinctive part-time nature is traced, alongside the activities of the three associations representing the colleges and their staffs. The views of these on the proposals of the Board of Education to introduce an experiment in technical teacher training in the late 1930s are considered. The wartime planning of technical teacher training as part of the emergency teacher training scheme is discussed, and the setting-up of three centres for teacher training in technical colleges and their work up to 1950 are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to some authors (Thomas & Loxley, 2001), 'inclusion' has become something of a cliché, even being 'evacuated of meaning' (Benjamin, 2002). In England, teachers and teachers' assistants are required to implement inclusion but, in the absence of any universal definition of what the term means, the way in which they enact it varies depending on their understanding of this concept. In this paper, which was originally given as a performance text, we will be re-presenting data collected in the course of narrative and autobiographical investigation of mainstream teachers and teaching assistants' experiences and understandings of inclusion. Through these re-presentations our aim is to illustrate and bring about an engagement with the range of perceptions and conceptualizations portrayed. These demonstrate the tensions and resistances between systemic and personal elements in their understanding of inclusion. Our focus is primarily methodological in that we explore what 'narrative and the performance turn' (Denzin, 2003) have to offer to research which seeks to investigate practitioners' articulations and understandings of educational inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the Spring 2005 Colloquium, which took place in London, England. Believing that there was still much to be gained from gathering more intelligence about the future, nonetheless the steering group believed that certain dimensions, absent in the earlier events, were now considered desirable, voices from different parts of the world, and from different disciplines as well as those familiar in teacher education and training. Six people were invited to give brief discussion papers to a group of participants, who would then discuss and digest their ideas as a stimulus to informing strategy for the future.

The views of a range of teachers towards South Asians in schools and colleges in Birmingham are explored in this paper. Based on 23 teachers, often senior in nature, from 11 educational institutions (9 schools [1 independent, 2 selective, 6 comprehensive] and 2 further education colleges), analysis of attitudes is in relation to gender and religion; socialisation and language differences between South Asian groups; and teacher ethnicity and antiracist multicultural education policy. It was broadly found that teachers viewed the education of South Asians based on the modus operandi of the educational institution they represented as well as the way in which differing South Asians based on socio-economic status, ethnicity and gender were thought to act and behave. There are implications for how South Asians are perceived as individuals as well as groups by teachers, as well as how schools can make a real attempt to improve existing home–school relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]