Centre for Teaching Excellence: apply to host - stage 2

Aims and objectives

Background

A core theme of a number of reports on Scottish education, including Prof Muir’s report on reform of national education bodies, has been the centrality of the professional role of teachers and the importance of working together with a clear focus on in learning, teaching, and assessment.

In line with that evidence, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills announced in October 2023 that the creation of a Centre for Teaching Excellence would play a key role in supporting that core focus on pedagogical improvement.

An outline has been developed with input from a co-production group including a range of stakeholders, including practising teachers, headteachers and their representative unions and professional associations. This has included consideration of a range of principles that should underpin the development of the Centre, particularly that it should be focused on the needs of those who will use its services, collaborative in its approach and deliver best value in terms of supporting improvement in outcomes.

The initial focus of the Centre will be to work with teachers, including those in Gaelic Medium Education, to develop stronger coherence and connection between research and evidence, particularly as developed in an academic context, and teaching practice in Scotland

This is intended to:

• enable teachers to develop their pedagogical expertise through critical reflection and research, drawing on well-established research, theory, and practice from across Scotland and internationally.
• build stronger links between higher education and teachers, particularly between research, evidence, and current classroom practice.

Aims

The overall aim of the Centre is to support teachers, including those in Gaelic Medium Education, to actively lead and engage with research and evidence to help inform and develop their practice.

This will help support teachers to engage with research and evidence to help enhance their practice, which in turn will help to improve the overall outcomes for the children and young people across Scotland. 

The Centre will work with teachers, to achieve the following objectives: 

• working in collaboration with teachers and other stakeholders to identify areas of priority for research on learning, teaching, and assessment in Scotland’s education system

• supporting practice-focused research, for example practitioner enquiry, on teaching, learning and assessment, in relation to those areas of priority

• gathering national and international evidence about pedagogy and practice, providing analysis and synthesis of that evidence, ensuring this is widely accessible and relevant in a range of different contexts

• sharing research evidence and experiences to support teachers to develop their own practice.

• establishing partnerships with educational stakeholders including local authorities, schools, universities, and national bodies to enable the development of professionally relevant research-practice collaborations

The Centre for Teaching Excellence will reflect the following strategic areas of priority, delivering across the National Outcomes:  

• National Performance Framework 

• National Improvement Framework 

• National discussion on education 

• National Framework for Inclusion