Rebuilding Teaching: Shaping a Profession that Inspires and Endures

Rebuilding Teaching: Shaping a Profession that Inspires and Endures

12th March at the Brooks building from 9am - 4pm

This event brings together researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders to explore how some of the recommendations of the Teaching Commission might be translated into practice. We will focus, in particular, on possibilities for: fostering strong cultures of professional learning, removing systemic barriers facing Black and global majority teachers, and promoting teacher resilience by providing teachers with both the practical resources and cultural conditions that they need to thrive. The latter strand includes the launch of an online toolkit which provides research-informed resources for fostering teacher resilience at the level of the individual teacher, the school and the broader education system.

Agenda

09:00-09:30: Arrival and refreshments

09:30-09:40: Welcome - Prof Mike Coldwell

09:40-10:20: Summary of the findings from the Teaching Commission – Baroness Mary Bousted

10.20-10.45: Introducing the EASiER toolkit - Ecological approaches to support educator resilience: moving beyond the individual teacher – Dr Steph Ainsworth

10:45 – 11:00: Tea and coffee

11:00-11:50: Workshop 1 (choice of 3)

12:00-12:50: Workshop 2 (choice of 3)

13:00-13.45: Lunch and networking including an opportunity to explore the EASiER toolkit

Key Note Speaker:

Mary Bousted

Mary Bousted was Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union. She is a visiting Professor at UCL Institute of Education and a Labour Life Peer. Mary is Chair of the Teaching Commission whose first report: Shaping the Future of Teaching was published in July 2025.

Teaching Commission Link

The Teaching Commission’s second enquiry is into what will teachers and ladders need to successfully implement the revised national Curriculum in 2028.

Workshops:

Building cultures of professional learning: professional development leadership in schools – Professor Emily Perry, Manchester Metropolitan University

This workshop draws on research into professional development leadership to explore how school leaders build strong cultures of professional learning. It identifies four leadership actions – supporting teachers as individuals, focusing on subject and context, enabling collaboration, and distributing leadership – which together can enable teachers’ professional development even within current resource constraints. We will consider the implications for practitioners, school leaders and policy makers, and how these insights can support the Teaching Commission’s call for collaborative teacher development and learning within and beyond schools.

Emily specialises in teacher professional development, leading research and development projects that design, implement, research and evaluate professional learning for teachers at all career stages. She has particular interests in professional development for teachers of science and in professional development leadership, and has received funding from organisations including Wellcome, Gatsby and STEM Learning. Emily began her career as a chemistry teacher, working in schools in the UK, Hong Kong and Brazil. She has served as a trustee of a Multi-Academy Trust and as a secondary school governor, and is currently Co-Chair Elect of the Association for Science Education.

Race To The Top: why diversity in teacher workforce is a must have, not a nice to have – Yamina Bibi, Education Project Specialist- Chiltern Learning Trust

Building on the work of the Teaching Commission, this workshop will explore the systemic barriers facing Black and global majority teachers from initial teacher training to senior leadership. The workshop will offer practical strategies and solutions on how to remove these barriers in order to retain and recruit teachers from diverse backgrounds.

Yamina Bibi is an award winning former Deputy Headteacher and English Teacher from London. She is the author of ‘The Little Guide for Teachers: Thriving in Your First Years of Teaching’ and a Commissioner on The Teaching Commission.
Yamina is currently Education Project Specialist at Chiltern Learning Trust and a Freelance Consultant. Alongside this work, Yamina is Co-Founder of South Asian Educators’ Network, Associate Trainer for Belonging Effect Associate and #WomenEd Network Leader.

Supporting teachers to thrive not just survive: using ecology mapping to explore possibilities for supporting a more resilient teacher workforce

We report on a three-year project exploring the possibilities for cultivating a more resilient teacher workforce. The study adopted a social-ecological framing of resilience, using ecology mapping to identify risks, protective factors and levers of change at the level of the individual teacher, the school and the broader education system. A mixed methods approach was adopted, beginning with a quantitative survey (n=2943) investigating the relative importance of a range of factors as predictors of teacher resilience, followed by the co-creation of resilience interventions in eight case study schools. We will explore key findings, as well as their translation into the EASIER toolkit.

Dr Steph Ainsworth is a Reader and Co-Chair of the Education Policy and Practice Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has several years’ experience as a primary school teacher and has a passionate interest in teacher wellbeing.

Dr. Jeremy Oldfield is the Deputy Head of the School of Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He researches resilience and wellbeing from a social-ecological perspective. He has worked with at-risk populations in Guatemala and within UK schools.

Dr. Claire Agius is a Research Associate at Manchester Metropolitan University. She researches emotional labour and wellbeing within complex systems, drawing on trauma-informed practice, co-produced research, and social-ecological approaches.

The Manchester Met team are coming towards the end of a three-year project, as part of the ESRC Education Research Programme, ‘Decentring the resilient teacher’, which brought together teachers, academics, the NEU and Education Support to promote teacher wellbeing by creating more resilient environments for teachers.

For queries, please email:

• Dr Claire Agius ([email protected])
• Dr Steph Ainsworth ([email protected])
• Dr Jeremy Oldfield ([email protected])

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