Research and develop

The Teacher Researcher Programme run by GTCS can help individuals to turn their experience, hunger and curiosity into tangible findings that could have wide reaching repercussions

Fiona Hyslop told the International Summer School on Leadership held in Edinburgh recently that: "One of the challenges is to get more teachers involved in research projects so they can better understand the findings and put them into practice.

Dissemination of research findings at present is not translating itself into classroom practice. I believe we need to think hard about how we remedy that."

One of the remedies lies in the opportunity offered by the Teacher Researcher Programme operated by GTCS. Participation in the programme is open to all fully registered teachers working in Scottish schools who wish to research a topic linked to the priorities identified on the website.

The Council has made access to the programme easier by removing the requirement to apply by a specific date each year. You can now apply at any time, depending on the amount remaining in the budget for the year. Successful applicants are funded for up to ten days "release from school to conduct their research and for approved expenses. In return, they are asked to provide a report on their findings for sharing with other teachers through the website and, in some cases, in other ways as well.

One teacher who recently conducted research under the programme said: "The more teachers undertake small scale research, the more this can contribute to the advancement of the profession. The GTCS programme gives complete freedom to research something you feel passionately about. And that passion creates possibility."

So what are you passionate about? What could be the focus of your research project? Recent teacher researchers have explored the use of learning journals to support probationer teachers, the use of a structured learning tool to encourage independent learning in lower secondary school, digital media in the classroom and improving parental involvement in a primary school. What's next?

Have a read of the case study on this page, or look at the research reports on our website. If you, too, have an idea for a project, contact me at 0131 314 6070 or email me

at ian.matheson@gtcs.org.uk. I look forward to hearing from you.

Case study

Jaye writes a glowing report to help the profession understand new methods

Jaye Richards (pictured left) has seen a few fads come and go, especially since the introduction of information and communications technology (ICT) in the classroom.

So when the biology teacher at Cathkin High School heard about the latest initiative, GLOW, she was impressed by its potential, but wondered whether it would have any lasting impact.

Jaye said: "I wanted to look at this subjectively. There is a history in education of money being thrown at ICT and computing projects but very little in the way of evaluation as to whether that money is being spent effectively. I wanted to see if I could measure any improvement in achievement and attainment in my classroom - and whether it was worth investing the time setting it up and running it if it wasn't going to enhance the teaching and learning."

To that end, Jaye set about researching the effects of using GLOW as a teaching tool in her own class. She tracked four S3 classes working through the same modules as part of the standard grade course. Results were tested using questions from past papers and an end of year exam. One class was taught using GLOW for one out of its three lessons a week over the course of one term.

Results for this class with the same pupils and the same teacher showed an increase of over 32 per cent for the GLOW modules. The attainment of this class on the non-GLOW modules was consistent and significantly below the best of the four classes. However, on the GLOW module, it was better by over 14 per cent than the mean of the other three classes. Further examination of the results showed that the weaker students benefited at least as much as their more able classmates.

The rise in attainment is remarkable. Now Jaye is finding out why.

"It could be increased teaching time, because pupils are more engaged in the lesson, the change in their learning styles, helping their memories to encode information better, making better links between theory and the real world - we don't know," she says. "But one thing we do know is that if we hadn't used GLOW we wouldn't have had this big rise in attainment."

Jaye hopes her research, and others doing research in their own classes elsewhere in the country, can help convert the non-believers to GLOW's cause. She said: "The more research which takes place in the classrooms - done by teachers as opposed to academics at universities - the more that's going to help to provide a groundswell of credible evidence that will bring these people who are a bit reticent at the moment on board.

"Because this is not going away, and people can stand and carp on the sidelines if they want to, but if they do, they're going to get left behind."

Jaye hopes that the widespread achievements capable through GLOW become a reality across Scottish education.

She said: "We're trying to build a curriculum for the 21st century and to deliver that curriculum in a 21st century style. GLOW can help give pupils the skills they need for modern Scotland."

You can download Jaye Richards's report: Will the Lights Stay On? Glow and Embedding ICT into Secondary School Curriculum Subjects: A Quantitative and Qualitative Design-based Classroom Study

Jaye's blog on using GLOW is at http://mimanifesto.wordpress.com/