Research and teacher education in the UK: building capacity

The need for capacity-building in teachereducation in the UK has been raised as a serious issue by a number of commentators. Tensions about the place of research in teachereducation have persisted for many decades, but following changes to the core funding mechanisms in the UK, the maintenance of educationresearch bases within many universities has become increasingly tenuous. This paper provides an analytical account of an initiative conducted by the TeacherEducation Group (TEG) to build researchcapacity in teachereducation. With reference to a review of the national contexts for research in the UK and research on teacher educators, the article argues that, in order to build researchcapacity initiatives we need to provide motivation and new types of networking opportunities for researchers, as well as developing their expertise. In developing this argument, the article also explore the relationships between national policy changes, institutional research cultures and individual habitus and agency in researchcapacity-building. The paper also describes a new initiative in England, the TeacherEducationResearch Network (TERN)