Introducing the NIoT Evidence Portal | connecting evidence to teachers' professional learning

A new, national resource to equip teacher educators with research evidence and practical insights to inform professional learning is the hot topic on educator’s lips across the country.
 
Built by a dedicated team at the National Institute of Teaching (NIoT), the recently published Evidence Portal brings together rigorous, high-quality research and expert perspectives from Schools and Trusts to empower teacher educators to be able to make evidence-informed decisions when designing and delivering professional learning and support. 

So why does it exist?
One of the NIoT’s core missions is to improve the quality of teacher and leader development at a system level by generating and interpreting research, applying the insights to the design and delivery of high-quality teacher development programmes to be shared across the sector.
 
We have seen this in practice with our published work with the NIoT on the delivery of the Early Career Teacher Programme (ECTP) in coastal and rural communities and more recently a research study into school level professional development. A number of SWIFT schools are also currently involved in an exciting AI and mentoring research project. 
 
£1.4 billion and nearly 2 million working days are spent on professional development each year. 
As teacher educators, we are surrounded by vast amounts of research but finding the time to make sense of it and knowing what really works in our own Schools and Trusts can be difficult. 
 
The NIoT Evidence Portal aims to solve this problem by bringing coherence to a crowded landscape and strengthens professional development by supporting teacher educators in accessing, interpreting and using research thoughtfully in their own context.
 
The Evidence Portal currently comprises two major features: 

NIoT Evidence Toolkit

'Your Questions' page

The NIoT Evidence Toolkit
The toolkit brings together bite-sized, trustworthy summaries of professional learning approaches drawn from systematic reviews of international research on initial teacher education and professional development.
 
It is organised into a number of different strands, including inclusive professional learning, coaching and leading professional development in schools. Each of these strands summarises what the evidence shows about the approach’s effectiveness, its impact on teachers and pupils and the key factors that support successful implementation. Importantly, each strand also includes an ‘In Practice’ section which features insights from experienced teachers and leaders who share how they have applied the approaches, allowing contextualisation of the research making the evidence usable, relevant and ready to apply.
 
Your Questions Page
The team at the NIoT are aware that not every professional learning question can be answered by the Toolkit alone and often there is not enough systematic research evidence to create a strand within the Toolkit for emerging or under-researched topics. In this section, therefore in order to address this gap, they share rigorous evidence-informed responses to the questions that matter most to teachers, Mentors and leaders.
 
How can Professional Development be designed to support workload?
What motivates teachers to engage in Professional Development?
Is it most effective when it is specific to the setting, phase or subject?
 
This collection will be expertly curated over time, responsive to your questions and needs. 

Your Voice Matters 
As the Portal develops, new strands and more resources will be added so that it continues to evolve and to ensure that the evidence remains practical, relevant and responsive to the priorities of Schools, Trusts, leaders of professional development and teachers.  
 
The NIoT Team are keen to feature professional learning experiences from across the sector, so please do get in contact if you would like to share (see the links below).
 
We increasingly value our SWIFT NIoT Partnership. Alongside their wide range of high-quality programmes, the Portal is another dynamic and exciting initiative that we hope our Schools and Trusts will embrace.
 
If you have yet to discover the Evidence Portal, we encourage you to do so and we will keep you informed of other innovative NIoT opportunities to benefit you and your teams.

By Jen Knowles, SWIFT Director of Teaching School Hubs 

Find out more about the Evidence Portal here

contact the NIoT team about your professional learning experiences here

find more information about the NioT here