Barker Institute
Research Agenda This is the power of a school-based educational research centre: the Barker Institute researchers are also teachers. In recent years, schools have been increasingly research-engaged. They have begun to carry out their own research to inform their practice and even to contribute authentically to the wider academic discourse on learning and teaching. It is an exciting development to see as such engagement leverages the intellectual resources a school has to offer to facilitate growth in learning throughout the school and its wider community. Barker has long had this experience. Since its founding in 2014, the Barker Institute has actively provided a greater understanding of teaching and learning, supported innovation and growth from teachers and leaders, and provided a deeper sense of what teaching and learning can mean from a student’s perspective. In recent years, the Barker Institute has continued to build on these accomplishments, conducting research as a community whose members are simultaneously experienced educational researchers and educational practitioners. This is the power of a school-based educational research centre: the Barker Institute researchers are also teachers.
14 • The Barker • Issue 135 • Winter 2022
To further define school-based educational research at Barker, the Barker Institute developed its Research Agenda, which was launched earlier this term at the staff Professional Learning Day. An outline of how the Barker Institute will go about its work, what its focus will be in the coming years, and how being researchengaged at Barker will impact education at Barker as well as further afield, the Research Agenda came to fruition after five months’ consultation and deliberation with stakeholders in the School and the education community more broadly. Ultimately the priorities of the School and its teaching and learning, the future of education, and the issues, concerns and interests held by the local, national and global community in which Barker finds itself, shape the focus of Barker Institute research detailed in this important document. It lays out, at a high level, an exciting and unique program for this year and into the future. The Barker Journey, the School’s longitudinal study that tells the story of a group of Barker students making their way through school in the 21st century, remains a centrepiece of the Barker Institute’s work. Alongside this project, the Barker Institute will pursue research in
