National Award 2022: The Transformative Work of Teachers Call for Proposals

Posted on 03rd Mar 2022 by Aidan Thompson

National Award 2022: Call for Proposals

The Transformative Work of Teachers

The Society for Educational Studies has awarded the University of Glasgow the National Award for 2022. The theme for the 2022 National Award is: The Transformative Work of Teachers.

The theme of the National Award 2022 will double as the theme of the SES Annual Colloquium in 2023 (to be held at Oriel College, Oxford in September 2023). The theme of the transformative work of teachers speaks to a number of different aspects of educational research. The themes presented below offer suggested areas for a proposal to consider. These themes are intended to provide focus to any application, whilst offer scope and breadth for researchers to investigate novel and original directions.

This focus for the 2022 National Award brings together current thinking in the area and aims to fund a piece of leading research that will build on existing work, spotlight teachers at the centre of any new social contract for education, and reemphasise the unique and valued role that teachers hold in society. The recent Reimagining Our Futures Together report by UNESCO (2021) is one report that foregrounds the transformative work of teachers in the current context, but prospective applicants do not need to limit their proposals to this report. This National Award seeks to build on previous funding opportunities that the Society has offered in the areas of Social Organisation of Educational Studies, Race and Education, New Technologies in Education.

The Society has granted the 2022 National Award to Sarah Anderson (PI), Mary Lappin, and James Conroy of the University of Glasgow. The project is a multi-case analysis exploring the nature of judgements regarding initial teacher education (ITE) students’ performance per normed teaching standards. The project focuses on the transformative work of teachers in three key ways: how classroom-based mentor teachers judge students’ performance, who institutions rely on to judge teaching effectiveness, and how ITEs use concomitant judgements of teaching effectiveness amongst a context of power dynamics. The project involves partnership of three ITE programmes: University of Glasgow, Scotland, Aberystwyth University, Wales, and Leeds Beckett University, England. The project seeks to enable more accurate judgements to positively affect teacher capacities, to reimagine the value and professional career trajectory of the ‘teacher academic’ as a reorientated role, and investigate impacting power dynamics amongst schools, local authorities, and ITEs.

Previous recipients of the National Award have included:

• 2015: NP3: New Purposes, New Practices, New Pedagogy, Prof. Peter Twining and colleagues, Open University.

• 2013: Race, Racism, & Education: inequality, resilience and reform in policy & practice, Prof. David Gillborn, Dr. Nicola Rollock, Dr. Paul Warmington, Sean Demack, University of Birmingham.

• 2011: The Social Organisation Of Educational Studies: Past, Present and Future, Professor Gary McCulloch, Professor Gemma Moss and Dr. James Thomas of the Institute of Education, University of London.