糖心视频

Publications

,

1 (2025)

, Gunn Ailie

(2025)

(2024)

Scottish Education Research Association Annual Conference 2022 (2022)

, Picton-Doherty Nadia, Brechin Jamie, Most Zoe, Lawrie Eryn, Hale Amy

糖心视频 Annual Primary Education Conference (2021)

, Cara Lee, MacLeod Rachael, Pye Jacqueline, Wilson Melissa, Nicol Lisa

糖心视频 Annual Primary Education Conference (2019)

Teaching

Allan's practice converges on the design, development, and delivery of research informed teaching at doctoral, postgraduate taught, and undergraduate levels of education. He is leader of the MEd Professional Practice programme and editor of the Strathclyde Student Education Research Journal (SSERJ). What's more, he has specific expertise in the teaching of social and educational research methods, to say nothing of an enviable command of writing in the third person. As if that wasn't enough, and applying the findings from over a decade鈥檚 worth of funded research activity to his teaching, Allan makes a deeply knowledgeable contribution to the higher education experience, both in terms of the omnivorous methodological insights that he brings to bear, but also according to his empirically derived understanding that functioning effectively as a human being is the basis for fundamentally useful teaching and learning. In the context of the contemporary neoliberal wasteland of capital accumulation from university activity, this is more difficult than it sounds. But as the poet and teacher Gwendolyn Brooks reminds us, "we are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond." If you don't need to think about what Brooks means, you might be part of the problem.

Research Interests

Allan鈥檚 research interests have never fully been explained to him. He has some ideas about the enhancement of research and critique in teacher education through a wider literary reference base. However there may be the glimmer of a dark smirk in this 鈥� of the kind that goes unnoticed in the transactions of those who regard knowledge as something that can be 鈥榗ascaded鈥�, and which the rules of intransitive verbs do not in any case really permit. So, guided by doubts about how information can be expressed through a language grown detached from it 鈥� and with apologies for the inconvenience 鈥� let鈥檚 just say that Allan has become eclectic in argument, blending the hunches of the seasoned researcher with a range of theoretical and philosophical perspectives. There may be grounds for suggesting that this self-questioning discourse is worthwhile and relevant for inquiry in teacher education. Those who believe in telekinetics might raise Allan鈥檚 hand now.

Allan has been a researcher on the European Commission鈥檚 Science-Teacher Education Advanced Methods project and, before that, the ESRC/TLRP-funded Early Professional Learning project. The EPL project was conceived to explore the extent to which a grounded theory of early professional learning could enhance the state鈥檚 competence-based model for new teachers and contribute to the theoretical and practical formulation of that process. The project employed a multi-method design which used ethnographic data as a basis for model building and testing in a correlational design that involved the development of five quantitative indicators of new teacher development.

The results of the project have since been turned into a book. Allan suggests that if you read only one book this year then it should of course be Ten Years to Save the West by Liz Truss; if you read two, however, make your second Improving Learning in a Professional Context: A Research Perspective on the New Teacher in School, edited by Jim McNally & Allan Blake (Routledge: ISBN: 978-0-415-49340-6). Says the Journal of Non-Euclidean Geometry: 鈥榯his book represents a new high at Pseuds鈥� corner鈥�.

More recently, Allan was a researcher on the Work of Teacher Education project. Funded by the Higher Education Academy through an ESCalate subject centre grant, the Work of Teacher Education project involved collaboration between researchers at three universities: Oxford, Brunel and Strathclyde. The project sought to open up for discussion the nature of teacher education as work in the higher education sector; where possible, to note similarities and differences in both practical activities and institutional conceptualisations; and to generate data that would be useful in setting a 21st century agenda for the development of teacher education. Participatory in design and framed by cultural-historical activity theory, the analysis of data is suggesting that the division of labour within HE education departments is formative in structuring the social relations of the work of teacher education, with teacher educators themselves coming to be regarded as a proletarianised class of academic worker.

Allan was the University of Stirling, 2002 Edward and Thomas Lunt Medal winner in English. He paid for his education at this time by writing book reviews and literary pieces for the Daily Express newspaper, and The Bookseller magazine.

Professional Activities

Organiser

30/3/2026

Invited speaker

11/3/2026

Invited speaker

11/3/2026

Editor

2026

Speaker

3/3/2025

Editor

2025

Projects

McNally, James (Principal Investigator) Blake, Allan (Co-investigator)

This project is intended to enhance the practice of beginning science teachers in inquiry-based teaching by evaluating the use of pupil voice as a formative instrument for professional development in the classroom.

The proposal combines two topical fields of educational research: the contribution of pupil voice to teacher development in schools and the promotion of inquiry-based methods in the science curriculum. The synthesis of these fields focuses on the development and evaluation of a pupil opinion survey instrument that can be administered by teachers, by and for themselves, in the classroom:

02-Jan-2011

McNally, James (Academic) Blake, Allan (Academic) Soltysek, Raymond Ronald (Academic)

This pilot study aims to identify changes in professional attitudes within cohorts of students studying professional qualification courses in law, education, social work, and speech and language therapy. In this context, professional attitudes are defined 鈥渁s a predisposition, feeling, emotion, or thought that upholds the ideals of a profession and serves as the basis for professional behaviour鈥� (Hammer, 2000 p.456). The project aims to compare similarities and differences of professional attitudes between students across different disciplines; to pilot the proposed methodology for cross-disciplinary research in developing professionalism; and to establish a research and theoretical basis for interprofessional collaboration that would inform teaching programmes and establish a foundation for future interagency working.

The project should allow the researchers to compare the preparation provided for the different professions, and across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The research findings will inform structure and content of these courses at the 糖心视频 in the future.

01-Jan-2011

Ellis, Viv (Principal Investigator) McNally, James (Co-investigator) Blake, Allan (Researcher) McNicholl, Jane (Researcher)

The project sought to investigate the practical activities and material conditions of higher education-based teacher educators鈥� work in England and Scotland. We worked with a small sample of 13 teacher educators from a variety of institutions in England (8 participants) and Scotland (5 participants). The participants had a range of experience, subject specialism, level of academic qualification and phase (although most were, nominally at least, secondary subject specialists). We interviewed and observed participants at work and asked them to complete work diaries at two different points in our year-long study. We made both quantitative and qualitative analyses of our data.

The research revealed that relationship maintenance was an almost defining characteristic of teacher educators鈥� work. Relationship maintenance involved activities directed at partnerships with schools but also a great deal of work on individual student teacher wellbeing. Superficially, the activities underlying this category included email and telephone correspondence and informal conversations in school or the university or college. On closer analysis, however, we found that these communicative activities were in fact aimed at maintaining (and in some cases building or repairing) relationships with students, staff in schools (professional tutors or mentors) and colleagues at the university. Partnership teacher education 鈥� in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers 鈥� works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research.

In talking about their work, teacher educators characterised it as socially important and highly pressurised. More experienced teacher educators tended to regret policy-determined changes in their role towards quality assurance and away from higher-level teaching. Their experience as teachers was an important, perhaps necessary, foundation of the work, but it was the cumulative experience of assessing many lessons by student teachers in many different schools that provided teacher educators with a distinctive if not unique breadth of contextual perspective on the developing beginner.

01-Jan-2010

Soltysek, Raymond Ronald (Co-investigator) Gallagher, Hugh (Co-investigator) Blake, Allan (Research Co-investigator)

The traditional structures of Initial Teacher Education have been under pressure for some time. Universities, eager to develop research capability and to economise during a downturn, have disinvested from ITE through reductions in teaching space, staff numbers and visits to schools, as well as rationalisation into larger Humanities Faculties, and economies in the structures of courses. Secondly, in staffrooms and populist columns in the national and educational press, those who work in ITE find their credibility challenged by a vociferous minority, despite many who speak enthusiastically about the quality of new entrants to the profession.

The underlying philosophy of both the Universities鈥� and the teaching community鈥檚 attacks on ITE is the same: it is the belief that serving school teachers are the best advisers of students, and that those involved in ITE, who no longer teach in schools, merely duplicate what teachers do. In an effort to test the hypotheses that ITE tutors鈥� visits to students in schools merely duplicates the processes occurring in school, and that teachers are more adept at giving professional guidance to students, the researchers commenced a small scale investigation of students' perceptions of their development on placement.

The research suggests that feedback from schools is conceptually different from that of tutors. School input deemed helpful concentrates on the particularities of the lesson, the class and the school, such as advice on 鈥渢he identification of practicalities and routines to which pupils were familiar鈥� or 鈥渋nformation regarding individual students鈥�. In contrast, University tutors' feedback appears to facilitate professional reflection, with comments such as 鈥渢he tutors are able to better assess my development as a professional movement鈥�, 鈥渁 continuous reminder [of] the big picture鈥� and 鈥渆nsuring students know exactly why we鈥檙e doing things鈥� being common. University tutors do not merely duplicate the role of school staff, but fulfil an entirely different and essential role which student teachers seem to value exceptionally highly. In the light of this, and with the Donaldson Review considering all aspects of Teacher Education, the way ahead for ITE must surely be in ensuring closer partnerships between Universities and schools in the knowledge that each plays a vital, complementary role in the development of new teachers on placement.

01-Jan-2009

McNally, James (Principal Investigator) Blake, Allan (Research Co-investigator) Byrne, Charles (Co-investigator) Harris, Linda (Co-investigator) Winter, John (Co-investigator)

Contemporary research reveals learning to teach to be a process of identity formation involving context-specific dimensions of experience: emotional, relational, structural, material, cognitive, ethical, temporal. Rather narrow definitions of cognitive development continue to shape professional learning however, and arguments for more dynamic models tend not to be substantiated with much empirical evidence. Building on interviews with 26 student teachers, this study reveals, in more specific detail, the contingent web of socio-professional interaction that shapes cognitive development in teaching, and suggests that beginners鈥� identities evolve as part of a co-creative learning process, rather than as passive subjectivities of a deterministic professionalism.

01-Jan-2009