Developing web-based materials to support the induction of new academic staff working on education courses in Higher Education

This project is designed to plan, collect and evaluate relevant support materials to be posted on the Education subject section of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) database for the induction of new academics (SNAS). The materials will be particularly targeted at academics involved in teaching on initial and continuing teacher education courses, and making the transition from school teaching to working in HE. The rationale for the research is two fold: firstly, there is an overall shortage of relevant resources for both new education staff and their mentors and senior managers; secondly, where resources do exist, they are fragmented across different sources and difficult for academics to locate. This is because they are often stored within institutions, embedded within journal articles and policy documents, or available only on disparate websites. This project aims to collate the findings of many of the current initiatives on the induction of new academics in education, to write or commission new materials where necessary, and to involve new academics in the on-going evaluation of materials posted on SNAS. Dissemination of the project will be through the SNAS and ESCalate databases, a report to ESCalate, and papers presented at the BERA and UCET conferences.