2026/27: Emerging Topics
What happens when emerging and contested knowledge reaches the classroom before education is ready to respond?
​
As public discourse accelerates, educators are increasingly required to make complex decisions without clear guidance or shared frameworks.
These seminars provide a structured, research-informed space to explore these challenges with confidence and professional clarity.
​
Grounded in original postgraduate research involving over 300 UK educational institutions, the 'Emerging Topics' seminar series adopts a Knowledge–Attitudes–Practice (KAP) framework to support evidence-informed teaching, professional judgement, and curriculum decision-making.
​​
Participants will engage with recent research findings on how unfamiliar or emerging topics are being addressed in education, while also contributing to ongoing studies that inform future educational practice.
​​
The seminars do not promote specific viewpoints or prescribe curriculum change. Instead, they provide a structured and supportive space for PSHE, Science teachers, and curriculum developers to examine evidence, explore professional attitudes based on current research, and consider practical responses aligned with safeguarding, governance, curriculum oversight, and public accountability.
​​
Through a combination of research presentation, historical reference, facilitated discussion, and reflective activities, these seminars incorporate on-the-day surveys, allowing participants to contribute to ongoing academic research into how educators interpret, negotiate, and respond to emerging areas of knowledge within formal education systems.
Our shared challenge
Across schools and colleges, different subjects often encounter the same challenges from different angles:
​
-
​​Science asks: What do we know? How do we evaluate the evidence?
-
PSHE asks: How do we respond? How do we support the students?
-
Leadership asks: What is our position? How do we protect the institution?
​
But increasingly, all departments are now facing situations where:
​​
-
There is no clear guidance
-
Knowledge is still evolving
-
Students are already asking questions
-
Engaging with the topic may carry perceived professional or reputational risk
Throughout these seminars, participants will:
​​
-
Explore the structural and cultural realities shaping educational response, alongside historical examples where emerging or sensitive topics prompted institutional resistance, highlighting patterns of policy constraint, risk management, reputation, staff confidence, and curriculum governance.
​
-
Examine the growing misalignment across education sectors, where schools and colleges are encouraging the use of AI as a learning tool, while higher education often penalises its use—raising important questions around consistency, expectation, and student preparedness.
-
Receive an evidence-based update on recent developments, public disclosures, and academic discussion on how new knowledge is interpreted, accessed, and applied—shaping learner curiosity, PSHE and Science development, staff dialogue, and wider public discourse.
​
-
Engage with emerging topics already gaining traction in public discourse and beginning to surface within classroom conversations, where preparation, and professionally grounded frameworks are essential to support balanced, responsible, and defensible decision-making.
​
Who is this for?
​
These seminars are delivered as two distinct cohorts: one for PSHE and Science teachers, and one for headteachers, senior leadership teams, and those with responsibility for curriculum oversight, safeguarding, or strategic development.
No prior subject knowledge is required—only a willingness to engage with emerging complexity.
Request Seminar Access
To receive seminar dates, locations, and access to detailed programme information for the 2026/27 Emerging Topics Seminar Series, please complete the form below.