Welcome to Lead Practitioners and colleagues from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. CUREE (Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education) works at the leading edge of evidence-informed practice - making links for practitioners in schools to the evidence base that can make a difference to your teaching.
We select the best of teaching and learning research and put it into the hands of leaders, policy makers and practitioners, making it easy to absorb and use. Specialist Schools are hubs of development and reflective practice and working with CUREE resources can inform and support you in work with your students and colleagues.
Finding your way to resources – A route map of research
How often is your decision-making hampered by not having the wider evidence on which to base your plans? When your staff make your School Development plan come alive in classrooms would they value tools and resources which can underpin their actions? CUREE can make you a ‘routemap’ which provides a visual guide to the resources which will help you with research and evidence. We are offering schools the opportunity to have this tailored and focused on the teaching and learning and CPD issues which are at the heart of your school’s development plans. For some ideas about the type of research that we can access and tailor for you the following three sections give you a hint of the massive evidence base we can draw on and tailor to your interests.
Research Bites are 90-second PowerPoint presentations with summaries of key research for practitioners to share among colleagues and at staff meetings. They focus on practical classroom issues. Here are a few to have a look at and more can be found on our research summaries page.
Increasing students’ motivational efforts in mathematics
Pupil talk and critical thinking in science and citizenship
History: what do pupils think?
Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable for teachers
Research Tasters have been developed to help practitioners weave research findings on effective practice into their own teaching. Each taster:
- Highlights an intriguing or counter-intuitive nugget of high quality evidence
- Offers practical tools for gathering evidence about how your students experience these phenomena now
- Provides suggestions about next steps
- Provides related web-links for further information
Have a browse through the tasters below to spot areas where you might like to do your own mini enquiries:
How can adapting learning activities increase students’ thinking skills capacity?
How can we ensure students of different abilities and aptitudes work well in a group?
How can we use enquiry to help learners become more confident and independent?
How can we guide group discussion effectively?
Research for Teachers is created on behalf of the GTC and CUREE has appraised, selected and summarised published research studies and presented teacher case studies to illustrate the findings. Research is selected that:
- illuminates the complex tasks involved in teaching
- enables teachers to see clearly whether there are links with their own pupils and practice, and what these are
- provides detailed information about the particular teaching and learning processes in classrooms with which teachers can identify
- is written and presented as accessibly as possible, in case teachers want to obtain and read the original text.
Some examples are included below and for more information, visit: http://www.tla.ac.uk/site/Pages/RfT.aspx.
Examples of curriculum design and implementation
Positive alternatives to exclusion
Strategies for success in multi-ethnic schools
The impact of classroom support
Learning how to learn through Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies
What strategies promote effective student learning in maths?
What factors in CPD are linked to positive benefits?
Over many years CUREE has reviewed and analysed the evidence of what works in professional development for teachers. Click here for a summary of some of this work: Teachers' professional learning.
The conclusion that stands out is that professional development is much more likely to be successful when it involves collaboration between staff and that effective mentoring and coaching is key to this professional development. The evidence shows that when teachers worked together on a sustained basis (over at least one term but more usually two or three terms), this collaborative and sustained CPD was linked to positive effects on:
- students' learning, motivation and outcomes
- teachers' commitment, beliefs, attitudes, self-esteem and confidence in making a difference to their pupils' learning
- teachers' repertoires of strategies and their ability to match their teaching approaches to pupils' different needs
- teachers' attitudes to their pupils, the curriculum and to learning, and
- teachers' commitment to CPD.
Practitioner engagement in and/or with research and its impact on learners
Findings from a systematic research review throw new light on how practitioners in schools and colleges get involved in or with research, and about the impact which that has on their learners. This review explores:
- the obstacles to practitioner engagement in and/or with research;
- the forms of support that help practitioners overcome the obstacles; and
- the range of approaches practitioners use to engage in and/or with research.
To view the report click here. For a summary for practitioners, click here.
Coaching and Mentoring
The central role of peer support and specialist support was explored further in the creation of the National Framework for mentoring and coaching. A document regularly referred to across the system and underpinning the approaches of many professional development programmes, the Framework offers us a distillation of the principles, concepts and skills of coaching and mentoring.
To help your school to benefit from the evidence base in practical and engaging ways whilst developing your own approach to mentoring and coaching, CUREE has produced a suite of materials that can be used as part of development programmes within individual schools or clusters called Effective Mentoring and Coaching. Consisting of six different packs which cover the areas of Specialist coaching, Co-coaching, Mentoring and Whole school development, the packs support CPD leaders to run development for mentors, coaches and professional learners and build on the evidence about what has a positive impact for students. As leaders of CPD in an area the Effective Mentoring and Coaching materials can be used to support not just your school but can enable working across organisations and to support this CUREE is able to offer twilight and INSET sessions to kick start a coaching programme or to help to take an established programme to its next level.
Enlivening Mentoring
The new enthusiasm of trainee teachers coming into school is infectious and one of the key ways that your school will help these teachers of the future through their huge transition is to have good mentors in place. These mentoring sessions are precious, so how can you ensure that not only are the mentors invigorated and skilful in their support but also that the trainee teachers approach this relationship with a strong desire and the capabilities to get the most out of it? The evidence base tells us how we can achieve this! Click here to find out more about our recent programmes enlivening mentoring for new teachers
And what’s more mentoring can come from more unusual places – have a look at this interesting Bite of research on the benefits of pupils mentoring student teachers.
Coaching for Support staff
Schools today recognise the contribution to learning which can be made through the effective deployment of support staff. However a recent Ofsted report recognises that there are still some significant issues which need to be addressed before the benefits of more adults in the classroom can be passed through to the children and young people. CUREE has been working with some Local Authorities and individual schools to tackle some of these issues. Click here to find out more.