The role of school-based Research Champions in a school-university partnership

Journal article

Abstract:: The value of teachers’ engagement in and with research is long recognised and it is acknowledged that school–university research partnerships are one way of enabling such engagement. But we know little about how research‐based knowledge is negotiated into school practices. Here we draw on data from nine ‘research champions’, who are teachers in schools which are part of the Oxford Education Deanery, a research partnership with a university department. Taking a cultural/historical approach, the study examined the strategic intentions and actions in the activities of the champions as they negotiated research‐based knowledge into their schools. Data comprised 59 completed templates that described what they did and why. Findings revealed differences between those with close links with senior leaders—who could take a whole‐school approach—and those whose reach was restricted by their position in school practices. Nonetheless, all the champions carefully selected and targeted research in ways that reflected their knowledge of local contexts. The findings point to the need to incorporate the champion role into school systems and for universities to value the role as they develop their own research agenda.

Language:: English
Keywords:: teacher research

FFR

cultural/historical

partnership

school practices
Pubs id:: 1121234
Local pid:: pubs:1121234
Deposit date:: 2020-07-27

Copyright holder:: Burn et al.
Rights statement:: © 2020 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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