Education Workforce Council

Q&A with EWC research group

Jeff Cole, Humanities Network Lead for Central South Consortium

Having been a Pioneer working on the Curriculum for Wales 2022, I have become increasingly interested in the research behind the comprehensive educational reforms taking place in Wales. As I have begun to read more widely, discovering the EBSCO education source, available via the EWC’s Professional Learning Passport, has been invaluable to my research!

As a Pioneer, I welcomed the opportunity to attend the national ResearchEd conference in London, where I was inspired by speakers from schools in England who had been appointed to newly created posts as “Heads of Research”. One was from Eton and leads their Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning – one can only dream! But the others were from state schools and the descriptions they gave of their roles resonated with me as Wales is committed to supporting teachers to become research informed, evidence-based practitioners. The speakers recommended various online research banks such as BELMAS, BERA, and the Chartered College of Teaching, which offers EBSCO to its members. However, most of these organisations charge a subscription fee which is unrealistic for state school to meet for every member of staff and which represent a significant investment for individual teachers. I began to lose heart.

At the same time, as meeting the Heads of Research, I began to transition into the role of a PL Pioneer for Welsh Government and as part of this process I was required to embark on formal Professional Enquiry for the first time in my career. My PL mentors from Cardiff Metropolitan University alerted me to the availability of EBSCO through the Professional Learning Passport. They enthused about it, not simply because it is a highly reputable resource but also because it is free to use for all EWC registrants.

As my role has continued to develop EBSCO has become ever more useful and valuable to me. I now lead a cluster of secondary schools in Bridgend as they take their first steps into research as part of the National Professional Enquiry Project. EBSCO was the first recommendation I made to that group, so that they could resource their learning. More recently, I have been appointed to lead a series of research projects on behalf of the Central South Consortium and again I have ensured that all participant researchers are using EBSCO to conduct literature reviews and to build reading lists for colleagues who want to follow in their footsteps.

As part of this role I am also carrying out a Professional Enquiry of my own for CSC. EBSCO is the foundation stone upon which I can build that research. Being able to freely access educational research from across Britain, Europe and the wider world enables me to find a wealth of knowledge on a multitude of issues, synthesise what has been learnt from all over the globe and use it to present new conclusions to colleagues in my region. Without EBSCO the same piece of work would be harder to accomplish and expensive for me and my school.

We might never have a Centre for Innovation and Research in my school, but we do have EBSCO. It’s a tremendous resource and I would highly recommend it to any professional seeking to expand their horizons and improve their practice.

Jeff Cole is the Humanities Network Lead at Central South Consortium.

To find out more how you can get started with your research tool, EBSCO and get started with your Professional Learning Passport here.