Eilidh Slattery
Eilidh Slattery is a Lecturer in Arts Education at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), a leading voice in dance education across Scotland, and an active researcher in teacher professional learning. Her research focuses on supporting primary teachers to develop their use of dance and creative movement, ensuring children and young people have equitable access to dance education.
Eilidh trained as a dancer and dance teacher, gaining qualifications with the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) and Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD). After teaching in a variety of contexts and locations, Eilidh gained her BEd (Honours) in Primary Education and her MEd in Learning & Teaching in the Performing Arts. In the primary school context, she held roles of class teacher, specialist teacher (dance), principal teacher, and acting headteacher, whilst delivering professional learning and guest lecturing on Initial Teacher Education programmes. Following her lecturing role in Primary Teacher Education at University of Dundee, she joined RCS in 2019, where she teaches on the PG Cert and MEd Learning & Teaching in the Arts programmes. In 2026, Eilidh won the Outstanding Research Supervision Award at the RCS Student-led Awards.
In 2022, Eilidh secured competitive funding to conduct a large-scale research project exploring the dance education experiences of 211 primary teachers. Her rigorous report has become a foundational resource, directly informing national policy conversation and leading to new initiatives disseminated through conferences and publications. In response to her research, Eilidh established the Primary Dance Network Scotland, a national network to support primary teachers with dance education which connects teachers online for professional dialogue. In 2025/26 Eilidh was awarded joint funding from the Athenaeum Engagement Award and the daCi (dance and the Child international) Twinning Award for an international research project pairing up primary teachers from Scotland and Australia in a teacher professional learning collaboration focusing on dance in the primary curriculum. 2026 also saw the release of a co-authored book chapter to support primary teachers to develop their dance-specific knowledge, and the publication of a case study focusing on one primary school’s experience of developing teacher confidence with dance across a whole school year.
Eilidh designed and leads the CPD Teacher Professional Learning short course – Dance in Primary Education here at RCS, as well as providing bespoke professional learning to schools and Initial Teacher Education programmes. She is also a member of Education Scotland’s Collaborative Group for the Expressive Arts as part of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle.
Her actively developing research portfolio demonstrates her determination to rigorously underpin dance-specific teacher professional learning. She regularly presents at national and international conferences and engages in ongoing empirical studies which focus on centring teacher experience. As an active daCi (dance and the Child international) member, Eilidh contributes research and advocacy work to the international dance education community.