Bethan was a teacher for many years and then became a teacher educator at a local university based on her teaching experience and mentoring ability. With the introduction of the new Welsh initial teacher education accreditation criteria, Bethan is looking forward to becoming more research active by taking a lead role in assimilating, conducting, publishing and supervising research. She may also have to improve her qualifications so that she can supervise master’s and doctoral students.
Catrin, a middle manager in a primary school, has been teaching in a pioneer school for five years. Like many of her colleagues in the 100 pioneer schools in Wales, Catrin and her team have been working in partnership with the regional education consortia, Welsh Government, Estyn and teacher education institutions to jointly develop practice-based research projects in schools.
To fulfil the requirements of the new Welsh initial teacher education (ITE) accreditation criteria – and Qualified Teacher Status standards, which encourages teachers to support life-long professional learning by engaging actively with educational research – the ITE programme in which Geraint is enrolled is developing a new Master’s of Education Practice in collaboration its partner schools. Geraint wants to enrol in the programme as he likes the idea of “teachers as consumers and participants in research”.