Staff in the Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment department (CPA, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society) are committed to developing a culture that values teaching, learning and research as interconnected aspects of our work and thereby supports synergies between education and research.
Our focus on research-informed teaching and learning practices highlights the importance of sustainability of our professional activity, being sensitive to the ongoing needs and changes among our staff and students, as well as that of the wider environment. Ensuring sustainability in our educational practices is an ongoing iterative process of do, review, learn, replan to ensure much-needed detailed attention to interactions between teaching and students.
Our vision of sustainability is reflected in an education that incorporates research-informed pedagogies.
CPA colleagues share examples of pedagogical innovations (such as online/distance initiatives; research-informed teaching and learning explorations teacher educator identity developments; ethics investigations enterprises) in this repository of Research-Informed Teaching and Learning (RiT&L), showcasing projects aimed at improving learning and teaching and how highly sensitive practice becomes sustainable through the processes of doing, reviewing, learning and replanning.
The RiT&L repository is an evolving resource, where summaries of completed and ongoing projects will be regularly uploaded. These summaries are short ‘two-page’ spreads giving a brief description of the project and of the research journey.
We hope that this repository provides an inspiration for colleagues beyond the CPA department, to research their own teaching practice. Colleagues, especially those new to pedagogical research and who are interested in researching their own practice will benefit from surfing the pages of the RiT&L project, and tapping into the RiT&L repository if something catches their eye, that might apply and be relevant to them. There is much to learn from each other!
In 2023, we are taking forward this initiative, with dedicated CPA staff acting as mentors in the department to support colleagues interested in Researching their Own Practice in Education via monthly meetings of the newly evolved ROPE group.