I am off to the national ResearchEd conference for the third time. Last year I said I wouldn’t do this: the date clashes with my local agricultural show, a major community event, and I am no longer an Education student. My MA is finished.
But here I am on the train at an unseasonably early hour again. And I am not even a ‘proper’ education person: I am not a teacher but a member of the supply staff. In the hierarchy that undoubtedly exists in schools, I’m below stairs. I am not part of a profession; my rate of pay is hourly; my prospects for career development are nil. So what am I doing?

One answer is that ResearchEd is an exciting entity and I want to see how it’s doing. All that slightly mad enthusiasm back in Dulwich in 2013 has matured into a strong, growing movement which maintains its original aims of being accessible to all, showing intolerance of woolly thinking or political guff, of seeking and questioning the best research that might help teachers to be better.

Another answer is that I have a wishy washy old fashioned romantic view of education and believe that education improves people. Not improves their employability or their career prospects; not that it means they can get better results; and certainly not that it makes them socially or morally better. Actually, it may do all these things, and very welcome they are too, but what I mean is I actually believe that spending a day learning and thinking will make me better. My brain will benefit. I suppose I could be learning anything but since this day relates to my weekday job, I will undoubtedly be able to link today’s content to stuff I know already, and stuff I will encounter in the future ; I expect the processes and effects to be more accessible, more complex and maybe longer lasting. Frankly, I am now at an age when the prospect of keeping my brain working at a more complex level is deeply appealing… The ‘dribbling pantaloon’ stage gallops apace.

Over the summer I read Peter Korn’s book Why we make things and why it matters. It explores the idea that understanding and being able to engage richly in what we are doing is satisfying, even restorative, on a deep personal level.

We can often merely be consumers of our jobs: to do the tasks and take from them the immediate benefits they offer – activity, structure to the day, money, social interaction. I suppose I am trying to be a craftsman about my job. Even though I plan to leave it at the end of the academic year, there are still 191 school days to go, and the day that matters most is today. I’m off to ResearchEd to get better.