Congratulations to Prof. John Schostak and James Duggan for their successful application for £49,036 from the Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund to develop the ‘Education Research Clearing House’.

There is currently a range of substantive practices and significant online communities for sharing evidence-based practices in education yet there is a concern that such developments exclude academics and the potential for education research to support, inform and challenge practice.

In response the project will develop an online platform to enable teachers to share and find innovative and effective practice, and communicate to other practitioners and academics to facilitate a broad and rich conversation to improve practice.  Bringing academics together with practitioners offers the opportunity to close the gap between educational research and practitioner research to harness the benefits to both theory and practice.

The pilot phase of the project is starting in March and at this point they are looking for schools willing to participate in developing the platform.  If the approach project is successful however the plan is to extend the platform to a broader range of practitioners that work with children and young people, from museum curators to those working in Further Education.

Working in partnership with the Co-operative College the project includes funding for a PhD studentship.

Watch this space for developments!