Teacher Research Engagement – Overcoming Barriers

Obstacles to teachers engaging in and with research can be a combination of their own reservations and voices of dissent from policy makers and school leaders. Claire Harley proclaims the importance of research informed practice and how barriers can be removed.

There has been a notable shift towards research engagement in schools. Exponentially, charities, universities, academics, consultants, teaching schools and other external organizations have declared support for the use of educational research in schools. The pursuit of research informed practice can positively support the teaching profession and should be encouraged , but how can this be achieved?

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Creative Teaching & Learning

(Recording) Session Three: How to Teach Project-Based Learning In A Virtual Environment

23 Feb 2021

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      string(317) "successfully made a difference and the new setting. It is likely to replace problematic practice that needs improvement, rather than replacing something at random, which may actually be working well.One way of looking at the Toolkit is that it is like an encyclopaedia of solutions to educational challenges which ..."
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      string(4473) "successfully made a difference and the new setting. It is likely to replace problematic practice that needs improvement, rather than replacing something at random, which may actually be working well.One way of looking at the Toolkit is that it is like an encyclopaedia of solutions to educational challenges which others have found in the past. The extent of the impact and distribution of the effects gives you a probability of how likely it is to be useful in the future. The problem is that the actual questions to which we have all of these solutions are no longer attached as they are buried in the original research. It is therefore important to consider whether a particular research-based practice is appropriate as a solution to the challenges a particular school or teacher faces.The final practice dimension is how acceptable the findings are. At one level, they have to be educationally acceptable. Some kinds of behavioural change may be very efficiently achieved with pain or discomfort, but they would not be educationally or ethically acceptable. The next level is more difficult to address. To stand a chance of being successful in supporting change, research findings have to be acceptable to the teachers involved. If the findings conflict with deeply held beliefs about effective practice then they may either be rejected and not attempted, or even adopted resentfully and set up to fail. I have always argued that, as a classroom teacher, if you presented me with a robust and rigorously researched reading intervention which was consistently successful when evaluated, that I could guarantee to make it fail in my classroom. Teachers are the gatekeepers of their own practice.There is an irony here that I have experienced. The teachers who are to be more open to research-based approaches often seem to be the ones who are already highly effective. They actively seek to improve their practice and to increase the range of strategies they have to address teaching and learning challenges. They are eager to try out approaches backed by research. By contrast, I feel that sometimes those I thought might benefit most from trying out such strategies are perhaps the ones most likely to find them unacceptable or be unwilling to try something new. There is a clear role her for professional development here to explore and understand teachers’ beliefs when supporting changes in classroom practice.Shared responsibility built on professional expertise.We need to be clear about the limitations as well as the potential benefits of research-informed practice. Research can understand patterns of effects and help us identify ‘good bets’ based on the accumulation of findings across studies.The applicability of these findings is then problematic as we cannot be sure how these general findings apply to a specific context or a particular class of learners. The findings are likely to be helpful, on average, across a large number of classes and schools, but this may not help an individual teacher or a particular school to identify what will work for them.This suggests that research-informed practice should be a partnership between researchers and practitioners where each partner takes responsibility based on their professional expertise. The Toolkit aims to offer an overview of the relative benefits of different areas of education research. It does not, and cannot give precise recommendations for research-based practices to an individual teacher.Top TipsDo start with a problem or a challenge you want to solve. You are more likely to find a solution from research which will help improve learning outcomes for children and young people.Think about what you will stop doing. How will you create the space to do what you think will help?Identify a solution from research that is appropriate and applicable to your context.Remember Bananarama: it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it! You will need to commit to the solution you have chosen and watch out as you develop it to make sure it is actually helping.Steve Higgins is Professor of Education at Durham University. A former primary school teacher he is passionate about the use of evidence from research to support decision-making in schools. He is the lead author of the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit and is interested in understanding how best to engage with policy-makers and education practitioners to use research to support effective learning in classrooms."
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Professional Development

How Can We Help Teachers To Promote Evidence-Led Teaching?

21 Feb 2021