Research and professional practice in Scottish education

This chapter explores the relationship between of educational research and professional practice in education by examining the place accorded teacher research in current policy and developments in Scottish education. Scottish education is undergoing an extensive period of reform where change to the curriculum and assessment programmes, the Curriculum for Excellence (CfEx) (SE 2004, 2006), is now to be realised through a programme of teacher development (National Implementation Board 2012). The chapter begins by outlining briefly this extensive programme of reform and details the way in which teacher policy is constructed as the means of achieving the aims of the CfEx. A core element in this programme of reform is to ensure a more coherent and sustained approach to career long teacher education and within this, there are emerging forms of professional practice where research and pedagogy are entwined in ideas such as practitioner enquiry/inquiry. However, while there is an increasing focus in Scottish educational policy on teacher research, there is a lack of clarity about what this is and how it relates to the enhancement and sustaining of professional practice. There is a range of terms used to describe teacher research and this chapter outlines some of the key underpinning concepts found in the literature in order to explore the meanings attributed to this term in policy in Scotland. The chapter then analyses the construction of teacher research to be found in the policies teacher development in Scottish education particularly the professional standards