 Maen nhw'n marihail, wrth gwrs Mary Maclechwch. Oedden nhw'n ystyried i'n gwybod i'r ysgolwgr AMF Mae'r awl iawn, Mary Maclechwch, Jennifer Redman, Llympgein Llymwric, Allison Egan, maen nhw'n ef oedd unigfaith o gyfan ac Tony Hall, yng ngyraig NUI. A chi'n tu'r gweithio ar sy'n tu, ond ein teulu, o'rful mae ymgyrch, flwyddyn yw ychydig. A mae'r progect yn ysgrifiannol, siaradau i'r ardufed o'r ysgrifiannol. I'm going to begin with some history firstly, some ancient history and some more recent history. I suppose our earliest and most eminent educational philosophers, way back from the time of John Henry Pestilotsi to John Dewey, have been talking about the essential requirement for teachers to be researchers. I spoke about the importance of teachers engaging in regular cycles of inquiry, looking at their practice, learning from learners, for learners, and for the wider educational community once they share and add to that body of knowledge. But somewhere along the way that researcher role, which was seen as so central and so important, became peripheral and ultimately detached. That responsibility for educational research was assumed by higher educational institutions. I suppose this is where a big gap emerged between educational research and educational practice. Irish teachers are frustrated with that gap. At the beginning of this whole process we spoke to teachers on the ground and one of them spoke in relation to the higher education institutions and schools. They said they're like two different worlds and there's a lack of a link between the two and that's a link that is needed to change practice and to move things forward. So that really is our vision. It's the vision for this project to build a digital bridge between these two very disparate worlds. So now the more recent history. So in 2015 we came to the National Forum against a policy backdrop which was really pushing this teacher researcher approach in teacher education. We had pushes within the ITE teacher accreditation guidelines going from the teaching council but also in national policy documents for teachers. And we came and we presented this vision which was to create a digital infrastructure for student researchers, for teacher researchers, and for higher education researchers to engage and collaborate together in an online community of practice for educational research. Sort of ensuring that educational research was informed by educational practice and vice versa. And we have moved quite a long way on that journey but I suppose we haven't fully realised the ambition yet. So first of all I suppose we had to build that bridge and we did succeed in delivering feature-rich technology. We built the bridge. That was the first big job that we had to do and we did that. But I suppose also we had to ensure that we had a community and we had to take a number of steps to build that community and we succeeded in bringing about a large community which included student researchers, teacher researchers and higher education researchers and by the end of that approach we'd over a thousand active users. So we told people about the bridge, we brought them to the bridge and we figured out some effective ways of getting them to cross that bridge and meet each other in the middle. So we piloted on a small scale a number of different ways that worked effectively to actually use this project. I suppose we presented this slide at the end of our national review piece before. We said a lot done what to do so we were able to recycle this slide. We had clearly identified areas that we needed to work on and the base of feedback as well from the forum. I suppose the biggest thing was some people maybe found the bridge a little bit difficult to navigate. So we have looked at trying to incorporate some software developments in terms of this new package and this new project. But I suppose in order to secure the ultimate long-term value of this project we needed to embed it into ITE practice. So that is the big focus of this particular project. We also wanted to diversify participation. It was very small scale the last time. We embedded it in a few of our own modules but now we've got new partners on board with us. We're delighted to have Reno Institute of Education with us and we're extending a national reach to try and push this project in a much more national impact. Building more partnerships as we go through the process and a bigger community, a more vibrant and active community. And more support materials to guide people along the way as they navigate that bridge. Okay so now to the future. What are we going to deliver? Well this project has three core strands right. The first one is looking at integrating research into teaching and learning right. So rather than I suppose the last time when we came up here we were thinking okay we're going to target research methods modules that's what we were about here. But we realized over the course of our project and what the focus of here is it's not about this detached isolated approach to research methods. It's about an incremental integrated approach to research methods. So what we're talking here is not about the research methods modules. We're talking about integrating TREX and collaborative research engagement into the general ITE modules. Be they teaching of maths, teaching of language, inclusion, integrating in that way. So that students are experiencing research methods. They're linking practice and research in a real life way as they go out throughout their program. Not this detached thing that happens at the end and they don't really see the relevance of it. So that's core to the whole piece. The second strand is to build that community and I'll speak to you about the ways that we have conceptualized in terms of how we are going to do that. And the last piece is about software support. Improving our software. Improving the web platform and finessing the app and really working on the application for the site. And more support material so that people can actually use this very effectively. So how are we going to go about doing this? Well we are going to begin with stakeholder dialogues. We are going to begin by having workshops in all the ITE institutions between students and lecturers to facilitate collaborative reflection on the teaching and learning experience. To figure out what these people actually need and what is actually going to work for them. To hear the voice of the students and to hear the voice of the lecturers. And I suppose the student voice is central to this. And in fact it was one of the biggest drivers of this focus that we have in this particular piece of work. The students the last time said to us and I'm paraphrasing a quote, a very powerful quote that we actually were very moved by it. They said to us yeah you know we had done research methods modules before but we didn't really see them as being relevant for our jobs as teachers. But now having experienced a t-rex integrated approach to a module. Now research is so important. This is the voice of the students. So that has really influenced our approach in this absolutely. Module redevelopment programme is really looking, after that we are going to look at an intense look at professional development for the lecturers so that they can integrate it with supports. Because it takes a lot of time, it will take a lot of work and support in order to do that. So we are working on doing that and we also want to make sure that we produce and work examples as we like to call them t-rex employers of how people have effectively used this in their practice so that they can share that as a resource for future. We have a very clear focus in terms of how to build our community of practice. We learned very quickly in the previous project that just setting up a digital infrastructure and bringing people there doesn't mean that they're going to talk to each other. That you can't just organically expect a community of practice to grow. You have to scaffold it and we've done that in this focus week approach. So we pick an identified team related to education and we share research news related to that identified team over the course of that week. We invite members of our community who have done Emmett's and done undergraduate dissertations on that particular theme but nobody ever hears about them to create three minute dissertation or thesis videos to share on rex. We're going to set up journal clubs so that we can invite our colleagues who will be related to a particular theme to pick one of their research journals which often might not have huge readership and it's definitely not going to get too much readership in the teaching or student population so that they can share it with a particular group on rex of teachers and students and they can discuss it to show real impact and to try and translate that research into having a research impact and we will continue as well with the very successful rexpert chats or t-rexpert chats now where we bring an international expert which will be related to the theme to discuss that theme and the research related to that theme with the students and teachers and a t-rex advisory panel will also be set up to ensure that this is an iterative process evolving process with voice of all stakeholders represented on that and finally the last round is software and development we're going to look at refining features and looking at some structural redevelopment of the platform on the basis of previous feedback improving the visibility of the projects and we're also going to really work on that mobile app development which students spoke to us as being really critical for their engagement with the platform and we're also going to try and capture user experience more so in support materials so that students can and lecturers can navigate the whole process much more effectively and easily so i'm going to hand you over now to my colleague Merrick McGann who's going to talk to you about impact and sustainability okay so um Maria has already hit on a number of the things where we're going to see impact um the some of the the strands of the project and primarily involve a substantial amount of professional development and to a large extent um the the resources here are set aside in order to take pressure off people who want to change and there is already a strong appetite for redevelopment of the way we do things and for better inclusion of research and so on in initial teacher education modules but everyone's under pressure and through dedicated spaces such as the workshops and then um support programs um that we've included in the work packages we basically just will offer an opportunity to just depressurize a little bit so that people get an opportunity to reflect and revise their work in collaboration and in dialogues from the start with teachers and other um sort of peers um those redeveloped modules then as Marie mentioned will will be developed into worked examples and the aim here at all stages really is to lower the bar for entry lower the barrier so as that it becomes easier and more fluid and less of a daunting challenge to change the way you do things and to adopt effective means of integrating research activity into your modules and this supports the just that culture of enhancement of evidence-based practice which is changing within the teaching profession nationwide within Ireland and also then essentially has is having knock-on effects throughout initial teacher education as a result and because all of this is scaffolded through the the online social network it's in going to involve a lot of integration with technology-based delivery and therefore we will see improved technological self-efficacy with ITE module leaders as well within the community development we've got a wider network we already have new initial teacher education institutions on board through marino and we've had very very useful and very positive dialogues with the likes of the Institute of Education in DCU as well and through another other partnerships we have sort of an extensive professional network for research engagement in in teaching as well which I'll talk a little bit more about in a second and one of these things the as Marie mentioned what REX allows or TREX allows is this bringing together of people from different professional backgrounds teachers can be on TREX they don't have to join a specific university teaching system in order to do it and student teachers start with TREX and they keep the same profile as they go out into the teaching world and we already have examples of students who were in final year modules that involved sort of a TREX a REX based component who have now come back as the teachers to collaborate with students in in those same modules so that there's a sort of a gradual growing of the community in that way in terms of sustainability for membership history today shows a strong potential for growth and as Marie mentioned we have more than a thousand active members we're in the the 1300s thereabouts but just to one of the the principle means we do it is through the joy of having the captive audience of undergraduate students and PME students and BED students across the country so even if we just take these dotted lines are cumulative numbers of graduates per annum from each of the participating institutions even if only 10% of those students stick around and continue to use REX through their teaching life we get this green and sort of gradually growing graph of engaged TREX users and that doesn't include the teachers and because this is with this project we're focused on the area of higher education the aim is to focus on bolstering that aspect of the community but we have a complementary project which will involve other elements of um to sort of round out the community um so we will we aim to continue to recruit other IT providers but also crucially we're building national level governance structures in collaboration with professional bodies that includes the teaching council that includes the national council for curriculum and assessment and the centre for effective services um and they are we're developing a sort of a TREX steering group to help guide the the development of the project within national priorities and the TREX advisory forum or the TREX advisory panel as Marie mentioned which is a forum of stakeholders and students um higher educational professionals um teachers and um professional support bodies um so very and that really is the sort of the aim to sort of continue to develop the the clicker seems to have stopped working so I'll just sort of briefly mention as well in terms of maximising that sustainability there is a there's another project which is focused on bringing the teachers um the TREX is already in use uh continued use by research engaged teachers um so this is the teaching council website and through um they are sort of already advertising the what it was the REX and is going to become the TREX system as a means of sharing research activity um and also there is a supported project by this research alive consortium as they call themselves the teaching council the NCCA and the CES who aim to drive um the embedding of TREX activities within schools and um teachers research activity through for example the teaching council's research support framework um that will bring the teachers to the group of students and higher educational professionals that we are looking for your support um in this instance. Thanks very much.