The NTRP project has now been completed, and the research summaries it produced can be freely accessed from this landing page.
As you will be aware, the coalition government are making extensive policy changes and deep budget cuts. This extends to serious concerns amongst our Government sponsors about nationally funded conferences. Sadly, this leaves us with no other option than to cancel (or we very much hope postpone!) the Teacher Research Conference originally scheduled for November 2010.
The Panel are pleased to announce that many of the teacher research summaries being prepared for the event will still be published online. They feature high quality practitioner research into CPD and Narrowing the Gap in achievement for vulnerable young people, and will be available in the autumn at www.curee.co.uk. Their new Inside Information magazine will also soon be launched illustrating, through high quality practitioner research, some of the key characteristics and benefits of research-rich CPD.
The Panel are also exploring lots of possibilities for the future, including becoming more independent and replacing some of their policy work with a stronger teacher to teacher focus. The Panel are hoping to support a range of innovative local and regional events to engage teachers with summaries of teacher research, teacher friendly digests of academic research and to champion practitioner use of research across the country.
If you would like to receive details of future events and publications, please contact joe.askew@curee.co.uk.
Would you like to express your views on how research is used in practice and how important findings should be made available to teachers?
The NTRP work with other practitioners, promoting and facilitating high quality teacher engagement both in school-based enquiries and also with formal published research. We also champion the practitioner perspective in supporting and challenging the research community to pay attention to teachers’ needs through relevant studies and applicable findings. We are proud of these achievements but believe there are now new challenges facing the profession. Much as we welcome the increased emphasis on teacher judgment and reduction in central prescription, the possible manoeuvre of free research resources with the close of, for example, the GTCE with its Research for Teachers feature raises questions about what teachers want and need by way of access to research. So the Panel is currently investigating just that.
We would like to explore the ways in which we can continue to best support your needs and interests as a teacher. We are consulting with a wide range of practitioners from across the profession and have designed a short questionnaire which will help us to gather your opinions on:
- the research themes that would most interest you,
- how and where you access research findings, and
- the formats that you would find most helpful.