1. Building Portals for
Evidence Informed
Education: Lessons from
the Dead
Mike Blamires
email Michael.Blamires@canterbury.ac.uk
Canterbury Christ Church University, United Kingdom
Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep
Cervantes

2. What are the aims of the TTRB?
• To make available the professional knowledge base
supporting teacher education
• Increase range and quality of resources available
• Raise the status of teacher training research and
knowledge
• Promote change: Research  Impact on Practice
• Provide a personalised support service

3. TTRB Structure Key: Guidance, Advice Contractual
& Progress relationship
The Users
Students/Trainee
Teachers &
Teachers, Teacher
Educators, Mentors, Other Professionals
National Stakeholders
TTRB Project Team
Lightbox Education, Canterbury Christ DcSF, Ofsted, CFBT.NCSL, Becta, UCET,
Church University, Institute of
Education, British Education Index
TLRP, ESCalate, NFER
Editorial & Commissioning
TTRB Reviewers
Over 200 reviewers have Advisory Board
Academics and Trainers Representing
contributed to the TTRB
the Profession

5. Enduring and Emerging priorities
• Every Child Matters (five outcomes)
• Subject Knowledge / Pedagogy
• Personalised learning
• Education for Sustainable Development
• Integrated working to support the achievement and well-being of
every child
• Improve levels of early reading & writing
• Revised secondary curriculum 2008
• Introduction of 14–19 Diploma teaching from 2008 onwards
• Masters for Teaching and Learning (MTL)
– raising standards and narrowing the achievement gap
• SEN & Disability

6. Illustrative Usage figures taken from TTRB
(independently gathered from google analytics)
 Over 210,000 page views a month
 Over 7000 page views a day
 Over 2000 visits per day 62,000/month
 16,000 Registered Users
37% trainees: 21% Tutors : 22% Teachers
 One article released every day
 Users over a 30 day sample
from UK 23,152, US 985, Australia 255, Canada 163, India 119,
Ireland 118, Spain 116, Philippines 96, Malaysia 88, Germany 72, UAE 64,
Singapore 59, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 56
 140 Active reviewers from over 70 Institutions:

7. 1 CEA
2 RSPE
3 EBEST
4 CUREE
5 EPPI
6 EEP
7 TTRB
8 CFBT
9 EDUCARCHILE

8. Leeds Evaluation: Accessibility
• The accessibility to a range of resources, previously
unavailable
• ‘marked impact’ on part-time students/trainees, for
“finding a great starting point for their research”
• ‘personal research’, further their subject knowledge,
and to “leave the day with further research, further
reading to do some background stuff”
• “I often refer [the students] to the E-librarian,
particularly when they’re doing the more
independent aspects of their course”

9. Leeds Evaluation: Theory/practice
• “making a bridge between the theory and the school
practice”
• “What we’ve tried to do is to encourage our trainees
to address [their inclination to the practical] head on
and learn in a variety of different ways not just by
doing teaching in a classroom but also by reading
by engaging with what research is out there and the
TTRB has been a tremendous help in terms of been
able to link them very, very quickly with that.”

10. Validation
“Given the quality of the site in terms of content and
presentation, its value to tutors and trainees and
how highly it is rated, it deserves to be exploited by
the widest possible constituency of users.”

11. Archive

12. Lessons
• Agree ownership via new copyright formats
• Agree project risk procedures as part of the QA
• Future proof the classification systems
• Make these transparent to the user
• Harness Open Educational Resource attitudes and
technologies (microdata, HTML5)
• Link Really Simple Syndication etc to your categories
• Work as a channel with provenance rather than a web
site (eg Jorum publish paradata in the learning
Registry)
• Prioritise dissemination and valorisation

13. Back from the dead?