So, it turns out that keeping an up to date blog is harder than I thought it would be! My autumn term has been dominated by the normal pressures of getting to know all our new students and preparing for the Christmas concerts but with some exciting additional activity this year. I'm about halfway through completing a research project for the Chartered teacher programme. I wanted to work on a project that would stretch me beyond the department so I'm developing and running journal clubs for interested teachers across the whole college. Alongside this I am carrying out a whole staff survey to find out about teachers use of research evidence to inform their practice. As part of this assignment we have a phone meeting with an academic expert in the relevant field. I was lucky to chat with Prof Chris Brown who's work I had read as part of my literature review. He provided me with some suggestions of additional reading and approaches to take with my project. It's going to be a busy period for me now as I work on the whole staff aspects of the project while also writing up my research report. That's February half term sorted anyway!