Research-2-Practice Supporting Secondary Science Teachers to Engage with Education Research

Evidence-informed teaching has been a focus for the UK government since 2014 and whilst there is a suggestion that engagement with research to inform practice can enhance the quality of teaching, access to high quality research is a challenge for school-based practitioners. Successful schools make research more accessible to staff by building research resource banks and by collaborating with universities. Whilst stronger schools also support teaching staff to become more independent in their engagement with research, there can be a tension between access to research and the judgement of its quality. Furthermore, teacher workload has been highlighted as a concern across the education sector and this includes that of trainees engaged in initial teacher education. Lesson planning has been identified as something that can be burdensome for trainees and the expectation that they develop individual lesson plans should be reviewed to help address workload issues