Scots seeks to be a place where teachers bring to the classroom deep knowledge of their discipline and deliberate reflection on their approach to teaching boys, drawing on and contributing to the best of pedagogical and discipline specific research. A number of staff at the College are engaged in 'action research', where the lines between theory and practice are broken down and teachers work collaboratively to design interventions in their own classrooms or programs. In the latest Research Bite, Dr Sarah Zitner, an accomplished artist (whose work includes the much loved statue of a Scots boy outside Aspinall House), formerly a lecturer in art theory and practice at the University of New South Wales and now a visual arts teacher at The Scots College, reflects on her own journey to bring together academic and artistic worlds, as well as recent experimentation with collaborative teaching practice in visual arts classrooms. See here for other Research Bites profiling staff research at The Scots College.

The Research Centre's 2014 Annual Report has just been released. It shares exciting news from the wide range of research and partnership activities in the life of The Scots College across 2014. Highlights include:

• the first cohort of Scots graduates to achieve the Diploma of Tertiary Preparation through the University of Sydney - the first Australian Year 12 cohort to matriculate straight into undergraduate programs
• collaborative research studies with UNSW into motivation and music and Raffles Institute in Singapore on the relationship between sport and academic performance
• the Scots-University of Sydney Masters of Education (Leadership and Management) cohort who graduated in 2014 after an amazing 2 week learning experience at Cambridge University
• action research into boys' literacy, the reasons men go into teaching, how to create creative classrooms
• the inaugural Scots Distinguished Professorial Fellowship with Professor John G. Stackhouse, Jr.

It also features information about new research projects in the College over the next 2 years, including:

• a Master Teacher project exploring the ways teachers become experts and opportunities for greater teacher mentoring
• ongoing research in K-12 Sports Science
• a major longitudinal study of the impact of the Glengarry experience
• development of faith and learning resources for the 2020 classroom
• a study of the paths of Scots graduates as they transition to university

Please enjoy reading it here.