Mutual benefits
Engaging with research and evidence has a whole host of short and longer-term benefits for teachers and school leaders, including, critically, the positive impact we would ultimately expect to see on student outcomes1.
One of these potential benefits is the mutually supportive relationship between research use and teacher confidence, the trust and autonomy afforded to teachers, and the status of teaching as a profession. These areas are closely linked to teacher job satisfaction, which relates to teacher retention – and this, too, of course, ultimately leads to more experienced and effective teachers, in turn leading to better outcomes for children and young people2.
Notions of professions and professionalism
It is worth starting by reflecting on what we mean by teaching as a ‘profession’, and how the idea of being evidence-informed links to this. Whilst definitions of a profession are contested, Gomendio4 and others note a number of features that distinguish a profession from a semi-profession, including:
- A high level of public trust and confidence
- An extended training period
- A collective body of knowledge and expertise, built on a theoretical base, that is shared by members of the profession
- High levels of professional autonomy, with limited amounts of supervision.
It is easy to see how these can be linked to the idea of a profession being evidence-informed; a strong, shared knowledge-base seems dependent on teachers having an understanding of the best available research evidence, whilst public trust and high levels of autonomy seem more likely where teachers’ expertise and up-to-date knowledge of the best-evidenced approaches are acknowledged.
Clearly, strides have been made towards teaching being an evidence-informed profession over the past few years; much has changed since Ben Goldacre’s plea for evidence to be built into education4. Movements such as ResearchED and organisations such as the Education Endowment Foundation and the Chartered College of Teaching have gained momentum, with ever-greater numbers of teachers and school leaders recognising the impact that engaging with research can have. But although the progress to date is encouraging, there is still much to do5. The level of research-engagement varies substantially across the system6, both between and within schools. So how can we best continue the journey?