As teachers, why do we do what we do? How do we know what we know, or think we know? The need for teachers to underpin their practice with theory and promote the use of evidence based research has always been important, but perhaps more so recently, now that Ofsted are requesting schools to justify their curriculum decisions, promoting their intent, implementation and impact model (Ofsted, 2018).
Grant Huddleston
Course Leader for BA/BSc Secondary Education with QTS
Teachers begin their careers armed with the experiences and knowledge collected during their time involved in the initial teacher training process. Any form of professional development after the training process tends to come from school in-service training and/or the teacher carrying out personal development themselves. However accessing research can often involve a minefield of blogs, posts on social media and purchasing textbooks and finding the time to engage with such research can easily become sacrificed once time allowed for preparation, planning and marking have been taken into account. Plus, accessing a lot of up-to-date research can often sit behind a pay wall or is full of academic language and can be daunting for some to absorb themselves in large, academic pieces that can be difficult to apply to their context. A study on secondary school PE teachers even found that the teachers involved found academic writing as not being responsive to the needs of the practitioner in the field (Pill, 2014).
Therefore, throughout 2020, I have been preparing for the production and publication of a journal magazine that will contain research based articles that can be used by teachers and easily read during ones break or lunch time. The aim of the journal magazine is to help support practice across the Birmingham City University (BCU) School of Education partnership and promote enquiry and research. The Birmingham City University School of Education Partnership is the link between all the school and college settings that work with the university’s school of education tutor team and support trainees in professional practice experiences. The role is to support schools, whilst they support our trainees. We welcome contributions from BCU university students, teachers (as part of the partnership) and academics (including guest academics from outside of BCU) who wish to make a positive difference to teaching and learning
Not only does the Journal Magazine aim to act as a bridge between practice and academia, but it will also hopefully encourage colleagues to engage in the writing process. We support both new and experienced writers to submit articles offering a wide variety of perspectives.
The journal magazine focusses upon three themes, with the editorial team deciding where each article/book review sits best.
- Enquiry and Support within the Partnership
- Current Enquiry and Practice
- Individual Enquiry and Scholarship
- We also encourage book reviews.
Anybody wishing to contribute an article or book review for consideration should email their draft to BCUEJM@bcu.ac.uk
Meet the editorial team:
- Grant Huddleston: Course leader for the BA/BSc Secondary Education with QTS courses and Senior Lecturer in Physical Education.
- Tina Collins: Course leader for MA Education
- Mary Bennett: Senior Lecturer in Primary Education
- Chris Bolton: Senior Lecturer in Drama Education
We hope you enjoy the journal and we look forward to any feedback or article contributions you would like to make.
References:
- Ofsted (2018) An investigation into how to assess the quality of education through curriculum intent, implementation and impact. Available at here
- Pill, S. (2014) Exploring secondary physical education teachers’ reading. The Global 2 Journal of Health and Physical Education Pedagogy, 3(4), 365–378
