As a Faculty of Education, which includes Initial Teacher Education (ITE) as part of its portfolio, we have a central role in examining what is happening in educational settings, but teacher educators like my colleagues and me, can often find it a challenge to get into schools and settings to undertake individual research projects. Whilst traditionally our School Direct student teachers have engaged in small research projects within their school settings as part of their academic qualification, we were aware that a large amount knowledge about schools in our local community was not being shared beyond the individual projects. The aim of this was to recruit a small group of student teachers to carry out sub-research projects as part of a faculty wide The Epistemic Insight Initiative project so that they could contribute to the wider project in a purposeful and meaningful way through 1) testing EI models; 2) trialing new models; and raising awareness of Epistemic Insight in schools as an alternative pedagogical tool.
We developed a model that would support teacher educators and help student teachers to understand the interplay between practice and research and help them to move from becoming research-informed to research engaged.
After a series of seminars introducing them to research approaches the students were free to choose their own EI research project. Here is a list of some of the research questions they investigated across Early Years settings, Primary and Secondary age-phase settings.
- How can the EI tool of the discipline wheel be used to support Reception pupils’ understanding of that disciplines might answer questions differently?
- A small scale Study to examine the extent to which multidisciplinary teaching is used within the primary curriculum to develop EI
- How can I use the Question Box to enable my pupils to develop Epistemic Insight in history and science ? A small scale case study.
- Are electric cars good for the environment. A study into EI
- Do Robots have their own thoughts. A study in EI
- What is the relationship between the heart and the person?
- Can the application of the discipline wheel model enrich students’ understanding of EI when studying the Black Death?
The consensus from the students was that researching Epistemic Insight made them think made them think about the pedagogical content knowledge, as one Reception class teacher reported;
“The research project really made me think about how we teach and what we teach, and what we are teaching when we teach it, apart from the content knowledge.”
Many students also reported a greater sense of agency in their professional development as this secondary English teacher reports;
“Undertaking the research enabled me to take ownership of my professional development…..enabling me to think outside the box and find my own research question based on something I was curious about” .
A number of the students felt proud to be undertaking the research as part of the wider EI project and we have permission from both the student teacher to use the data to build a picture of practice and pedagogy in our schools in Kent. Truly research-engaged practice.