Research Assistant in Doncaster

An exciting opportunity to contribute to a mission that values teaching as a fundamental societal good.

Apply By: 29 November 2026 Location: Within commuting distance of one of our campuses in Birmingham (B15 2HU), Blackburn (BB1 2HT), Bristol (BS10 5PY), Doncaster (DN6 7EQ), Beckenham (BR3 1QP) or Redcar (TS10 4AB) Salary: £35,570 per annum (plus London weighting if applicable) + benefits

About Us

The National Institute of Teaching (NIoT) is a school-led and research-informed organisation operating across England providing teacher and leadership training, from initial teacher education (ITE) to a dedicated course for CEOs of multi-academy trusts. The NIoT is among the largest national provider of ITE and trains thousands of teachers a year, across four regional teams and six campuses. We are committed to high quality, evidence-informed teacher education, and are on a mission to improve the quality of teacher and leader development across the system.

Part of this mission involves producing rigorous, impactful, and cutting-edge school-led research. We have a dedicated in-house research team who work with our programme-delivery teams to develop and test new methodologies, address critical challenges, and meet the evolving needs of our partner schools and organisations in the wider education sector. This is a new and exciting approach to embedding research within practice in education, and we work collaboratively to continually evolve and strengthen our approach to making research useful in teacher education practice. This role sits within the Research team, working on the Analysis of Teaching Practice (ATP) project, part of Teaching Improvement through Data and Evaluation (TIDE) project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

About the Role

What if we could better understand what happens in the classroom, and use that insight to help teachers develop their practice and improve outcomes for pupils?

We’re looking for a Research Assistant to join our exciting Analysis of Teaching Practice (ATP) project, an ambitious programme bringing together education research, classroom expertise and AI to deepen our understanding of effective teaching.

The project is developing a secure tool that enables early career teachers (ECTs) and their mentors to record and review lessons, alongside an AI model designed to identify teaching practices within lesson transcripts. Together, these tools have the potential to provide mentors with structured insights into classroom practice and help us explore which teaching practices are associated with teachers’ impact on pupil attainment.This role plays is central to making this work possible.

Working closely with colleagues across our research team, you’ll help build the high-quality, expert-labelled dataset that will underpin the AI model. You will coordinate and quality-assure the labelling of lesson transcripts by experienced teacher educators, analyse agreement between labellers, prepare and analyse data, and work directly with the schools, teachers and mentors using the recording tool.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who enjoys combining careful research and analysis with practical coordination and collaboration. You’ll need to be highly organised, comfortable working with complex data and committed to maintaining accuracy and quality.

Most importantly, you’ll be excited by the opportunity to conduct research that doesn’t simply sit on a page, but has the potential to support teachers, strengthen teacher development and contribute to better outcomes for pupils.

This is a hybrid role, with an expectation that you’ll work from one of our campuses at least once a fortnight, as well as attending in person where there is a business need.

We also bring colleagues from across the organisation together for our annual all-staff away day. This involves national travel and an overnight stay.

First interviews will be held w/c 7 December 2026

Second interviews will be held w/c 14 December 202

Corporate Responsibilities

• To ensure that the responsibilities of the role are carried out in a way which reflects the mission and the values of the NIoT.
• To be aware of and observe all policies, procedures, working practices and regulations, and in particular to comply with policies relating to Equal Opportunities, Health and Safety, Confidentiality, Data Protection and Financial Regulations, reporting any concerns to an appropriate person.
• To comply with all reasonable management requests.

Main Duties & Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate labelling of lesson transcripts: prepare materials, allocate work to labellers, monitor progress and keep accurate records
• Quality-assure labelling, including running checks, analysing agreement between labellers and supporting calibration and training
• Prepare, clean, manage and analyse quantitative and qualitative data, including large volumes of text
• Support the ongoing development of the teaching-practice framework and codebook, including sourcing examples from real lessons
• Support school recruitment, onboarding and engagement, and monitor use of the recording tool and participation
• Organise and support user research, workshops and consultations with teachers, mentors and other stakeholders
• Support research ethics and data protection processes, including handling sensitive data securely
• Conduct literature searches and syntheses
• Support the preparation of reports, presentations and other outputs
• Maintain project documentation and trackers, and support coordination across workstreams
• To support with regional delivery at your local campus. This will involve setting up for delivery sessions and welcoming participants/trainees.
• To sit on the viva assessment panels for a maximum of three days per year to support the process.
• To attend and support the delivery of the annual NIoT Graduation Day.
• Master’s degree, or equivalent postgraduate study, in education, psychology, social science, health sciences, economics, computer science, data science, or a related field.
• Experience contributing to the design and delivery of quantitative research
• Experience of managing, cleaning and analysing quantitative and/or qualitative data, including large amounts of text
• Experience of coding, labelling or rating data, or coordinating others to do so, with attention to consistency and quality
• Proficiency in R or Python for data management, analysis and visualisation
• Strong organisational skills, with the ability to coordinate several workstreams and meet deadlines
• Excellent interpersonal and written communication skills, including with teachers and schools
• Understanding of research ethics and data protection, and a careful approach to handling sensitive data
• Proactive and collaborative approach to problem-solving
• Reflective approach to practice, with a commitment to continuous learning and professional development
• A commitment to the aims of the National Institute of Teaching
• An interest in the education sector and a belief in the value of teachers and school leaders
• Experience of classroom teaching
• Experience of measuring agreement or reliability between coders, raters or observers
• Experience of working with text data, natural language processing or AI tools
• Experience of user research, workshops or co-design with practitioners
• Proven interest and/or experience in teacher training and professional development, including the Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework
• Doctoral degree in education, computer science, social science, health sciences, or other related field

Working at the National Institute of Teaching

Contract: Full time. Fixed term contract to June 2028.

Salary: £35,570 per annum (plus London weighting if applicable) + benefits

• Highly competitive pay and pay progression opportunities.
• Flexible start and end working times.
• Flexible working opportunities, including significant scope for hybrid working.
• At least 27 days’ holiday a year (plus 8 bank holidays) rising to 33 days after five years’ service (with an annual discretionary office shutdown between Christmas and New Year).
• Entry to the highly valued Local Government Pension Scheme
• Excellent opportunities to develop your skills and experience and to progress your career.
• A stimulating, supportive and rewarding working environment with a dedicated team of likeminded professionals.

Further Information

We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities and industries, and are committed to employing a team that has diverse skills, experiences and abilities.

Notes:

• To ensure a fair and robust selection process, we expect all application responses to be based on your own original thoughts, skills and experience. Our system includes functionality to identify AI-generated content, and applications where responses appear not to be the candidate’s own work may be disregarded.
• We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of applications.
• Candidates must already have the right to work in the UK, as we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role.
• This post requires a satisfactory enhanced disclosure from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) with a Children’s Barred List Check and Occupational Health Check is required as a condition of employment.
• This document is an overview of the role.
• The responsibilities will include but will not be limited to those listed above and it is anticipated that the role will evolve over time and as such the duties may change.

Contact us: If you have any queries about this role, please email us atrecruitment@niot.org.uk