The EIS’s Action Research Grants Scheme for 2026-28 will shortly open, and applications to the scheme will be welcome from Monday, 2nd March 2026.
Participation in this type of practitioner inquiry can be empowering and transformative, and the EIS has long-supported teachers’ and lecturers’ autonomous engagement with their own professional learning.
Researchers will undertake their projects over a 2-year period, and funding is available from EIS HQ to support members with expenses incurred as a result of participation in this scheme.
The scheme also has the benefit of invaluable peer-support; researchers will be invited to termly meetings with the rest of their research cohort and will be asked to share updates on the progress of their projects. In previous years, these meetings have consistently been identified by participants of the scheme as hugely valuable for scaffolding the research journey.
One researcher, from the 2023-24 cohort, described their participation in the scheme as ‘one of the best professional decisions I’ve made’
Engaging with peers has also made the process feel less daunting. Alongside the teacher-lecturer peer support, there is also assistance available to members undertaking the scheme from academic partners, who can offer specialist, technical knowledge on the research project – covering anything from which survey design to use, to complex methodological advice, and support with analysis at the project’s conclusion.
The EIS Education and Equality Department are also at hand to provide support and advice along the way.
Practitioner inquiry shouldn’t feel scary, or burdensome. It’s something teachers do every day – every time they think, ‘What if?’. Participation in the EIS’s Action Research Grants Scheme will allow for a deeper exploration of a particular part of pedagogical practice that members wish to explore further.
Past projects have focused on the impacts of outdoor learning, decolonising the secondary English curriculum, and the effects of play pedagogy on family engagement with learning.
One researcher, from the 2023-24 cohort, described their participation in the scheme as ‘one of the best professional decisions I’ve made’. They cited the support they received from EIS HQ, and their peers in the cohort during the process as invaluable, stating, “EIS resources and speakers introduced me to academic skills that would allow me to track the impact of my intervention with proper rigour.
By engaging with the EIS Action Research programme, I found support, advice and encouragement as well as a genuine enthusiasm for my idea
“I used a wider than normal range of methodologies to capture data and this was a direct result of inputs by EIS-arranged academic researchers. It allowed for improved tracking of SQA outcomes, and those targets focussed on building confidence and decision-making and provided the rigour I was concerned my approach might lack. These meetings were a tremendous forum for ideas and sharing good practice”.
The researcher expressed how much they enjoyed the process of participating in the Action Research Grants Scheme, and also how it had a positive impact on the pupils in their classroom, stating, “By the end of the project all learners were excited to share what they had learned and parental feedback was universally positive”.
Highlighting the motivational impact of the project, they concluded, “In teaching we often have ideas that, through wholly understandable constraints of time and the daily demands of the job, never quite come to anything. By engaging with the EIS Action Research programme, I found support, advice and encouragement as well as a genuine enthusiasm for my idea”.
If you are interested in reading more about the Institute’s Action Research Grants scheme, and past researchers’ work, please see our website.
To sign up to attend the online information session, which is taking place online (via Teams) on Wednesday, 25th February from 4.30pm-6pm, please register your interest online. If you would like more information, please contact Zoe McKeown (zmckeown@eis.org.uk)