The role of research leads in schools | Ensuring that evidence-informed teaching isn’t just a fad | Chartered teachers discuss how the use of research in their classrooms has impacted their teaching

Research leads play a key role in disseminating research findings in schools but how common are they, what does their role entail exactly, how can they best be supported and are we facing declining interest in research evidence to inform teaching?

Join Dame Alison Peacock to hear from Karen Wespieser from TeacherTapp about the prevalence of research leads in schools, who tends to hold the roles and what teachers think about the use of evidence to inform their teaching as well as four Chartered teachers, Adam Lamb, Charlotte Haworth, Angela Schofield and Chris Johnston, who will be sharing their lived experiences as research leads in their schools.

Finally, Dr Lisa-Maria Muller reflects on whether evidence-informed teaching is just another fad that will soon be replaced by the next best thing.

Adam Lamb is Head of Faculty for Languages (covering Spanish, French, Turkish, Latin and Classics) but have been a Whole-School Lead Practitioner in the past at Mossbourne Community Academy in London - a comprehensive secondary school. His project centered on how students read: looking at how explicitly teaching bottom-up reading strategies (such as looking at word morphology and word families) help improve performance in the GCSE Spanish Foundation reading exam.

Charlotte Haworth is Assistant Headteacher in charge of Teaching and Learning at Whitworth Community High School in the Rossendale Valley, Lancashire. She leads on evidence based practice and pedagogy and has developed a new set of T and L Principles for her school, which are rooted in evidence. Her Chartered Teacher project explored how they could develop reading and access to disciplinary literacy in geography, particularly with boys. The next two academic years at school, the T and L Focus will be on formative assessment as they embark on the EFA programme with SSAT.

Angela Schofield is Programme Development Lead for Excelsior Multi-Academy Trust in Birmingham. Her love of research began when she joined the pilot cohort for the Chartered Teacher Programme in 2017. She has carried out several research projects in oracy, teacher professional development as a class teacher and Deputy Head, and now leads research engagement across the trust in addition to leading on oracy, CPD and closing the disadvantage gap.
Currently Angela is working on a project with Marc Rowland around addressing educational disadvantage, a metacognition project with Let’s Think in English, and one on KS1 writing with Mighty Writer. She credits the Chartered Teacher programme with igniting her passion for research informed school improvement and therefore her career path to date.

Christopher Johnston is a history secondary school teacher at St Joseph’s College, Stoke-on-Trent. He is the school’s Research Lead. Chris has been involved in developing a ‘Teaching for Excellence’ framework for the school, which is evidence-informed. He supports the delivery of CPD relating to the framework. Chris has set up a padlet to make research easily accessible. He leads a Journal Club and recently set up a Breakfast Club where colleagues share practice that is evidence-informed. Chris completed the Chartered College Teacher Programme in 2022. His project explored the impact of feedback that focuses on the task, also combined with feedback on learning processes and self-regulation, on the attainment of GCSE history students.