areas for further research

Alison Hardy

Knowledge and Learning

How different types of knowledge develop and integrate in D&T

• How do conceptual and procedural knowledge build over time?
• What progression models work best in different contexts?
• How does design and technology capability emerge?

Teaching Approaches

Evidence-based pedagogical strategies

The ViSuAL Knowledge Alliance has developed research in The Netherlands, Finland, Estonia, and Switzerland.

Research consistently falls short in reporting theoretical frameworks which in turn increases the gap between research and practice. It further increases the difficulty teachers face in matching interventions with student needs (Hodges et al., 2016).

 They recommend three areas for further research:

This work is influenced by research on professional learning communities, leadership, learning organisations. Case studies would be welcome demonstrating how these ideas work in different contexts. 

This approach has been tested and found successful. Any similar programmes will need to evaluate their success. 

It is widely recognised that many aspects of EAL teaching and learning are under-researched in the UK; including the shape of effective CPD for EAL. With this in mind we are interested in hearing from schools, teachers and fellow academics who want to pursue practice-oriented research that examines effective pedagogy for EAL through any subject area; and who are interested in looking at ways of developing teachers’ pedagogy for EAL through CPD.

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Getting teachers involved in research within their own schools provides exciting opportunities for enhancing practice in education. Creating online communities can facilitate the sharing of findings from these small-scale research projects. The next step is to develop a research approach that has the potential to draw together findings from small-scale studies to enable these to be made generalisable across a range of different educational contexts.

Getting teachers involved in research within their own schools provides exciting opportunities for enhancing practice in education. Creating online communities can facilitate the sharing of findings from these small-scale research projects. The next step is to develop a research approach that has the potential to draw together findings from small-scale studies to enable these to be made generalisable across a range of different educational contexts.

Teacher education pedagogy is an under-researched area in general, so further research in the same field would be helpful. Further research in the following other areas would also be helpful.

These include mentoring of trainees; comparisons of UK and other systems; the professional situation of teacher educators; policy in UK and other systems; impacts and effects of teacher education; induction and CPD  of teacher educators (all in FE and VTE).