Skip to main content

This blog post was published under the 2010-2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

https://nctl.blog.gov.uk/2015/01/14/school-led-research-a-national-approach/

School-led research: a national approach

Posted by: , Posted on: - Categories: Research and development, School-led system

Research and development

Juliet Brookes, leader of NCTL’s school-based research and development team, describes the development of a national approach to support research in teaching schools.

The research and development national network was established in autumn 2011 to support teaching school alliances in their research and development work. It offers a way for them to collaborate and learn from each other at both regional and national levels, aiming to make research more accessible to schools and creating links with higher education institution partners.

We've worked with the network to support:

  • opportunities for training, sharing expertise and widely disseminating ‘what works’
  • a forum for networking between teaching school leaders and teachers

We’ve also encouraged a wide range of national, collaborative projects and conferences to create opportunities for teaching school alliances to share their research findings, explore what works, and stimulate debate.

Research outcomes

The research that’s been published to date includes:

Research themes

The first collaborative network project focused on 3 national themes:

  1. What makes great pedagogy?
  2. What makes great professional development which leads to consistently great pedagogy?
  3. How can leaders lead successful teaching school alliances which enable the development of consistently great pedagogy?

Ninety-eight teaching school alliances have been pursuing their own areas of focus within the themes. In November 2014 we held an event where they showcased their findings. They highlighted their learning so far, best practice and the challenges they have faced, along with solutions to overcome these.

You can read all of the final reports on GOV.UK. You might also find interesting these 2 short recordings of staff from teaching school alliances explaining the focus of their work.

Coaching within the school

Dr Keith Watson, from Portswood Teaching School Alliance, talks about their success with coaching within their own school. A key element of their coaching culture involves ‘parrot-on-the-shoulder coaching’ where a coach provides real-time feedback on teaching.

Read the transcript

Coaching partnerships

Jane Hamer, from George Abbot Teaching School Alliance, discusses her project on coaching partnerships: putting good to outstanding teachers together and asking them to identify problems and share good practice.

Read a transcript


If you have any questions or feedback, please comment below. To keep up to date with this blog, you can sign up for email updates or follow NCTL on Twitter.

For more information or opportunities to get involved with our work, visit our pages on GOV.UK.

Sharing and comments

Share this page

Leave a comment

We only ask for your email address so we know you're a real person

By submitting a comment you understand it may be published on this public website. Please read our privacy notice to see how the GOV.UK blogging platform handles your information.