The Chartered College of Teaching’s new research journal - aimed at having a “tangible effect on classroom practice” - has come under fire for failing to highlight authors’ commercial interests, Tes can reveal.

The college, a membership body for teachers, launched its Impact journal in January.

The journal’s name “reflects our commitment to our journal being something that can have a tangible effect on classroom practice and, subsequently, on the outcomes of our young people”, according to a leader column in the inaugural issue, written by the college’s director of education and research, Cat Scutt.

But the latest issue of the journal contains several articles about teaching practice that contain apparent conflicts of interest.

For example, one research article claims that Year 9 pupils taking a biology GCSE unit can double their marks by using a particular software package that draws on learning strategies such as “interleaving” - compared with those using more traditional learning methods.

The software in question was developed by the authors’ employer, Seneca Learning, and the trial was carried out and evaluated by the company’s employees.

Another article outlines ways in which visual learning is effective - written by Oliver Caviglioli, the director of TeachingHow2s, a company that sells visual learning tools to schools.

A third piece shows that specialist coaching can enhance teachers’ knowledge of speech and language sciences - co-written by two speech and language therapists who run a company, Clarity (Tec) ltd, which provides coaching services.

In the first article, Seneca’s connection to the research is stated within the piece, as is the fact that the software is currently free to schools “but may be used for paid courses sold to corporate organisations in future”.

The other two articles name the authors’ companies, but do not specify the services they provide.

‘Conflict of interest’

The measures taken by the journal to highlight authors’ outside interests do not go far enough, according to Dorothy Bishop, a University of Oxford professor who specialises in neuropsychology.

She was approached by Tes for her thoughts on the latest issue of the journal, which is based around the theme of neuroscience and cognitive psychology.

She said: “It is unfortunate that these articles were published without any statement of conflict of interest, especially as the issue is supported by the Wellcome Trust, whose name would give the publication scientific credibility.”

She added: “It is good to see attempts to bring science into the study of learning, but it does education a disservice if the review includes studies that are biased or not of a high standard.”

Tim van der Zee, an expert in educational and cognitive psychology based at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said findings from two of the studies were “in line with the literature”.

But, like Professor Bishop, he believed authors’ commercial interests were not made sufficiently clear. “I do think that it should be much more clearly stated at the start of the articles what the conflicts are,” he said, adding that this was also true of a fourth article within the journal, about growth mindset. The article is written by Carol Dweck, who “is very heavily invested in this theory, sells books, gets paid for talks, etc”, said Mr van der Zee.

‘Entirely normal’

Responding on behalf of the chartered college, Ms Scutt said all its articles were subject to “rigorous review”. This was echoed by the Wellcome Trust, which partnered with the college on the Spring issue of the journal.

Ms Scutt said it was “entirely normal” for authors published in journals to have “crossover” between the areas of expertise on which they write, and their business interests. The affiliations of authors who write for Impact are clearly included on all articles, she said. 

“This is standard practice within education academic publishing as well as in other sectors [like] medicine,” she added.

However, many research publications have adopted stricter practices. For example, the British Medical Journal asks all authors of education articles and editorials to fill in a “competing interest form”, which is then displayed alongside the article.

Regarding the article on visual tools, Ms Scutt said: “The article is not purporting to be original research, and is not promoting the author’s own work, which is visual guides for teachers, not pupils.”

On the article about specialist coaching, she said: “The first author is a professor of education based in a university [Rachel Lofthouse, professor of teacher education at Leeds Beckett University], writing about a project which involved working with specialist speech and language therapists. It is common practice in journals to credit other participants in the project, in this case the speech and language therapists.”

Professor Lofthouse added that the article was “not written to promote any specific services or practices” but “to illustrate a professional development approach that allows brokerage of knowledge between disciplines underpinning different professions”.