College of Teaching - A thought experiment about its role

So what will the proposed College of Teaching ACTUALLY be able to do for the profession?

Having read the BBC News article about the findings of research that suggested classroom design had an impact on academic success I asked  on Twitter how a College of Teaching would be able to support the adoption of the findings from this research into real classrooms.


I posed the question as a thought experiment to try and stimulate some discussion about how the College of Teaching may supplement and compliment the responses already active around research such as this. I am particularly keen to explore how our 'research-led' profession could use a College of Teaching to enable more professionals to make use of research such as this.

Gareth Alcot (@GalcottGareth) came up with some interesting suggestions ....

• research champions providing support advice access online
• work with training schools to support ITT
• research buddies/mentors supporting local/national collaboration between schools
• ...members/authors in school via staff meeting
• as well as local/national events, CoT teachmeets...
• ...research/discussion forum, 
• website with auto alert email, 
• online forum/discussion rooms, 
• >workshops ....

and the ever insightful Angela McFarlane (@AEMcFarlane) added ....

• one thing COT could offer is fora for discussion of research2unpick implications4practice- w authors ideally

Now Twitter is probably not the best place to explore more complex issues such as this so I thought, having stirred the pot, I would ponder on how the CoT could add value myself......

Rather than taking the role of the CoT from a point of view of the 'here and now' I think it is worth projecting a few years into the future when, perhaps, there are a large number of professionals enrolled within the College and it has matured a little, becoming accepted as a mechanism for exploring new ideas with the teaching profession. So the following thoughts are predicated on the assumption that there are thousands of teachers who engage, even in a minor way, with the College on a fairly regular basis and that the College has an 'active core' who engage regularly. So let's envisage this ...

The research, as reported on the BBC, carried out by Salford University would have been funded with a requirement to actively involve the CoT in the dissemination of the research and possibly in the design of the research itself The funding would also require the researchers to engage in a range of 'follow-up' activities with members of the CoT which would include online discussions and even opportunities to support individual CoT members or institutions in setting up small-scale action research opportunities based on their research. Since the funding would include these as part of the initial bid there would be no  issues around capacity to deliver and this would encourage those in the profession interested in the findings to explore them within their own learning contexts.

Furthermore the College could utilise the high-level connections that it has made with the commercial sector and Government to identify building projects, that already have funding allocated, which could be used to apply the results of the research in real-life contexts, possibly with some form of medium-term follow-up research associated with these projects. Again, the commercial sector would be encouraged to link some form of research to their bids, in association with the CoT, in order to qualify for the procurement in the first place. Using the resources within the CoT and the expertise that the College could call upon would mean that such research funding would not increase bid costs a great deal and would provide value both for the institution itself, the CoT and the profession as a whole.

Lessons learnt would be disseminated through conferences, etc. with profits from conferences and speaking fees going towards the CoT in order to help fund further activities.

Those who wanted to take on 'action research' projects within their institutions could be encourage by enabling them to earn academic credits towards post-graduate qualifications and recognition through a CoT-based pyramid of qualifications aligned to other accredited qualifications but based around criteria set by the CoT.

I'm sure there are many other ways that the CoT could be used to move research like this from 'nice to have' to a 'reality' in our classrooms and I look forward to seeing more ideas about its usefulness in the future.