Supporting the ongoing development of educational researchers can be more challenging than supporting the development of other researchers because they work across the university in different disciplines and centres. This small-scale qualitative study explored the motivation and engagement of educational researchers at a UK university, the support…

In the past decade, notions of teacher professionalism have been associated with increased accountability, standards, performance assessments, and teacher testing, and impacted by alternative pathways into the profession that downplays professional education and foreground subject content knowledge expertise and opportunity to learn on the job.…

This article reports on an analysis of reflections by students and staff following their experience of a student-staff partnership which conducted a case study exploring student mental health in higher education. During the primary project, several students commented on the benefits of the partnership. Furthermore, following completion of the…

This article centres upon experiences of supervising practitioner-researchers engaged in the first year of a Customised Master of Philosophy (MPhil) programme of study. This pathway resides within a larger collaboration between the University of Sunderland's Centre for Excellence in Teacher Training (SUNCETT) and the Education and Training…

The quality of how teachers are being prepared is seen as a priority in the twenty-first century and engagement with research is often considered a crucial element of initial teacher education programmes. Institutional and national contexts have an impact in the way research is valued. This paper investigates the perspectives of Portuguese and…

In 2014, the final report of the British Educational Research Association and Royal Society for the Arts Inquiry called for teachers to engage both with and in research as a core part of their professional role. After considering some of the reasoning and evidence underpinning this ambition, the authors explore one way in which it might be…

Increasingly, teachers and schools are becoming aware of the possibilities that becoming research-aware can bring. There is a small but powerful movement within the profession--in the UK and abroad--that has begun to integrate the fruits of research and the skills of the research practitioner into their own practice. But this transition from…

This article examines the growth of practitioner research in England through the creation of the Learning and Skills Research Network (LSRN) and identifies its effect on subsequent developments in what is generally known as the Lifelong Learning Sector (LLS). It offers an analysis of this development as a case study in developing practitioner…

This study focuses on the perceptions of student-teachers towards their engagement in small-scale research projects undertaken whilst on a one-year postgraduate initial teacher education programme. We present an institutional response to national and international policy agendas regarding the place of research within initial teacher education at…

This article describes an innovative continuing professional development (CPD) programme for experienced English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers, and a research study into its impact. The programme incorporates the principles of Practitioner Research (PR) and focuses in particular on the skills of data analysis and situated…

Developmentally appropriate research techniques were uncovered by involving ten Year 7 pupils as researchers in a four-hour workshop that investigated the effectiveness of multiple methods in gathering sensitive information from early adolescents. The pupils learned about, tried and evaluated the methods of generating interview questions, peer and…

This guide was written for graduate students and is intended to provide a grounding in research methods, particularly research in education, and to be a useful ongoing reference source. Each chapter was written by a professor, senior lecturer, or research specialist from a university in England. Part A, "The Concept of Research,"…