The Practitioner Research Programme is back for 2024-25
The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) is pleased to announce the relaunch and funding of the Practitioner Research Programme (PRP) for 2024-2025. For successful applicants, the costs of the first year of the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) are met by ETF. The window for submitting applications is now open and practitioners from across the Further Education (FE) and Skills sector are invited to apply.
The PRP is taught and supported by research-active teacher-educators from the University of Sunderland’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching Training (SUNCETT) who have extensive experience of teaching and research across the sector.
Applicants should present an explicit focus on the following:
- sector professionalism
- improving teaching and learning, be it from a practitioner or leadership perspective
- championing inclusion and/or wellbeing
- sector change and/or provider adaptation to change.
The PRP combines intensive research training with research supervision, mentorship and scholarship, leading to the award of an MPhil degree for successful participants. It is open to practitioners from across the FE and Skills sector in England. In the past, teachers from disciplines as diverse as English, Plumbing, Drama, the Arts, Blacksmith and Iron trades, Photography, Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Engineering have successfully completed the PRP.
The lasting benefits of the PRP across the sector have been profound, states Professor Maggie Gregson, who co-leads the programme at Sunderland. These include:
- increased progression opportunities for sector professionals
- improved student outcomes
- changed CPD practices across organisations
- enhanced performance in Ofsted inspections
- re-energised sector professionals
- a renewed interest in sector-based research, with new communities-of-practice emerging to build on these foundations.
To date, 25 FE and Skills PRP practitioners and SUNCETT alumni have successfully completed their ETF-funded studies and were awarded PhDs by the University of Sunderland.
Places on the PRP 2024-25 are limited, and the closing date for applications is Monday 16 September. To find out more about the PRP application process, visit ETF’s website.
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