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…

The supervision of master's students at the dissertation stage of their taught programme is generally considered to be one of the privileges of an academic in higher education (Bacwayo, Nampala and Oteyo, 2017). Of concern to those who are less experienced or new to the supervisory role is knowing the best way to effectively support their…

This paper reports on findings from a two-year project, which explored whether undertaking small-scale action research supported the development and articulation of the values of trainee teachers. Underpinned by a conceptualisation of teacher professionalism which prioritised research literacy, it used questionnaires to collect data from a sample…

School toilets, globally and historically, have been problematic as places of shame and bullying, often providing pupils with inadequate facilities. This participatory student research project sought to develop political agency with youth researchers, equipping them with research skills to develop a project about school toilets, and to help…

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 paper takes the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which is well known in teacher education, and applies it in research methods education where it has not been previously used. It asks how experienced social science research methods teachers, who know their subject (method) well, teach advanced social research methods to others.…

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…

Teachers' engagement with and understanding of educational research and data is an increasing concern for policy-makers around the globe. With unprecedented access to, and new forms of, 'data' in schools, concerns for its 'best practice' use in classroom decision-making have come to the fore. In academic spaces, these developments have also been…

Background: Undergraduate research is evident in many forms across higher education: in journals, at conferences and on research placements. It is widely reported that undergraduate research can encourage the development of discipline-specific and transferable communication skills and, in some cases, a more complex development of higher-order…

This article examines the challenges experienced by students when developing referencing practices. There has been minimal research into students' development of their referencing skills, with referencing often considered a mechanistic skill and not worthy of attention. This paper argues that, rather, referencing is an area of practice imbued with…

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…

Employers of chemistry graduates are seeking a range of transferable skills from prospective employees, and academics are increasingly seeking to build employability skill development opportunities into the undergraduate curriculum. However, research suggests that undergraduates do not recognise or value such skill development without prompting.…

This paper is both a reflexive report on an attempt to operationalise 'doctorateness' in a specific case context and a synthesis of theory from the philosophy of education and curriculum design. Using the context of a new Professional Doctorate programme in Law (the DLaw) at a University in the North-East of England, it is an exploration of the…