Epilogue: developing research-informed teacher learning

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book highlights challenge for school-based teacher educators, that they have increasing responsibility to support student teachers to develop research literacy and to engage critically with theory and research. In relation to a critique of clinical practice models and learning rounds, Carey Philpott considered how student teachers learn through reflection and how tutor and mentor feedback might support such professional learning within a professional learning community. Carey challenged the rhetoric of some commentators about the ‘gold standard’ of randomised control trial research and the use of research meta-reviews in education. Carey argued for an approach to teacher education that acknowledges emotional labour and identity formation involved in becoming a teacher. The clear contradictions in UK policy-making and in the arguments made by proponents of medicine-based models for evidence-based teaching motivated Carey to focus his work on the issues of developing research-informed teacher learning.