Capacity for Research Around Teacher Education (CRATE)

The Project

We aim to develop a strategic research agenda for the TEPL group, including identifying the potential for research impact, funding and future collaborations.

Teacher education research has been central to the Department’s research profile for over 30 years, and work within the Teacher Education and Professional Learning (TEPL) research group has continued to influence both policy and practice. Nevertheless, there is a need to build capacity further in order to realise the full potential for teacher education research within a world-leading department.

The CRATE research focuses on the opportunities for developing teacher education research capacity within the Department through clear identification of a future research agenda for our work. We are examining: research projects and funding; areas of focus; publications; current collaborations; wider collaborations; and networks,  focussing on research activity and impact, with the aim of developing outputs, future funding and collaborations in a more strategic way. We are also examining the different ways in which the various stakeholders in teacher education and professional learning (including schools) are able to engage in the research being conducted within the Department. This includes desk-based research (collating publications and other research outputs; tracking citations of our research in other publications, both policy documents and research papers, both nationally and internationally; tracking other measures of impact beyond publications; determining influence in the field through comparison with other institutions etc.). There is also a strong empirical base to the research, comprising interviews with Oxford-based/associated teacher education researchers, teacher researchers, leading researchers from a range of other higher education institutions in the UK, and a small sample of policy makers.

Through this work we aim to:

  • develop a strategic research agenda;
  • identify and articulate the principles that underpin high-quality teacher education research;
  • identify priorities for future research;
  • identify the nature of research that is currently informing policy and practice more widely;
  • identify how our research programme might be strengthened through research collaborations at different levels.

Project Details

Start date: February 2024
End date: January 2025
Funder: Departmental capacity building fund
Theme: Pedagogy, Learning and Knowledge; Teacher Education and Professional Learning