Abstract

Although there has been a significant level of public investment in Post Compulsory Education and Training (PCET) in England, the return on this financial outlay has not always yielded discernible value for public money in terms of actual improvements in the form of raised levels of achievement for learners. This suggests that in-house approaches to the improvement of educational practice and the continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers within organisations are somehow missing the mark. This places a duty upon those responsible for educational improvement to critically investigate current approaches to teacher CPD, in order to identify how we might go about the improvement of educational practice in ways, which offer better value for money to the taxpayer and improved educational experiences for both teachers and their students.

This paper reports the findings from a number of practitioner-research projects supported by the Education & Training Foundation (ETF) and University of Sunderland. These programmes are framed and guided by principles of collaborative professional development, practice-focused research and inquiry-based pedagogy. It explores the opportunities and challenges of improving practice through educational research at different academic levels, from a non-accredited programme, a Masters level Short Course, through to Masters of Philosophy and PhD. These programmes aim to produce significant, well-theorised and methodologically rigorous research outputs. These include insights into educational practice and educational improvement in order to generate illuminative cases of educative value, not only to the teachers engaged in the research but also to other teachers and policy professionals interested in improving educational practice.