In light of the 4th UN Sustainable Development Goal to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’, the work of OUTER is focused on the question of how we recruit, equip and sustain the teaching workforce necessary to achieve this objective.
We focus on all phases of teacher recruitment, initial preparation, retention and development. Our research ranges from psychological studies – focused, for example, on the use of video games and simulations to support the recruitment and selection of new teachers – to longitudinal studies of beginning teachers’ learning and the mentoring processes that support them. It includes a strong focus on teacher education policy and the kinds of pedagogical partnership between schools and universities that enable teachers to make the most effective use of research.
Much of the group’s research is rooted in our own long-standing initial teacher education partnership, the Oxford Internship Scheme, but we are equally concerned with the ways in which experienced teachers can be supported to continue learning – particularly through engagement in and with research – as they respond to changing expectations of education and to changing student needs.
Members of OUTER are actively engaged with the Department’s knowledge-exchange partnership, the Oxford Education Deanery. We also work extensively with national and international partners in many different kinds of collaborative project, focusing on the induction and development not only of new teachers, but also of new teacher educators. The group also encompasses a strong research focus on the professional education of medical practitioners.
This group is convened by Katharine Burn.
