About education research

The Northern Territory Department of Education (the department) values evidence informed practice, driven by high quality educational research and analysis.  The department is committed to the benefits which quality research can deliver to students, schools and the education system more broadly.

The department encourages research that has:

• a strong evidence base
• quality research design
• is of benefit or value to the department, schools or students
• contributes new knowledge and/or builds on prior research
• aligns with the department’s Education NT Strategy 2018-22.

The department’s Research Subcommittee (RSC) is responsible for providing strategic leadership regarding education research and evaluation, and considers all applications to conduct research in schools, including data requests.  The RSC is made up of key departmental stakeholders with knowledge of strategic policy, early childhood, community engagement and school improvement.

The department’s Research team assesses all research applications in consultation with relevant business areas/regional teams and provides secretariat support to RSC.

Applying to conduct research

All researchers who wish to conduct research or an evaluation in the Northern Territory must submit an application to the Department of Education’s RSC if their project involves:

• NT government school students*
• Children, parents, caregivers or community members recruited via an NT government  school
• Departmental employees (including teachers, support staff and corporate staff)
• Data held by the department that is not already publicly available, and/or departmental intellectual property.

This process also applies to departmental employees conducting research.

Following support from the RSC, the final decision on whether a school participates in a research project sits with the relevant school principal, and individual participation remains voluntary.

To obtain RSC support you must fill in the application to conduct research**:

• Application to conduct research PDF (826.3 KB)
• Application to conduct research DOCX (83.5 KB)

Please complete the application form and send it with supporting documents to researchapps.det@nt.gov.au.

Research guidelines have been produced to assist with the application development process:

• NT Department of Education research guidelines PDF (995.1 KB)
• NT Department of Education research guidelines DOCX (661.7 KB)

*Where a research project requires participation of non-government schools, researchers must seek separate authorisation from the relevant organisations.

**For cross-jurisdictional research, the National Projects – Application to Conduct Research in Schools form is accepted by the NT Department of Education and all other state government education research teams. This form can be accessed via the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) website.

Contact us

We have endeavored to answer frequently asked questions for both researchers and schools in the below documents;

• Researchers FAQ PDF (443.9 KB)
• Schools FAQ PDF (497.0 KB)

If you have any further questions regarding the research application process, or research being conducted in NT Government education sites please don’t hesitate to contact us via;

Email: researchapps.det@nt.gov.au
Phone: 08 8999 3535.