Geoff Whitty heritage
I have written this article subsequent to the death of Geoff Whitty in July 2018. It covers a topic that we had written on together extensively – first in 2005 in preparation for his British Educational Research Association (BERA) Presidential Address (Whitty, 2006), and then in relation to our publications since 2015 (Whitty and Wisby, 2016; Whitty and Wisby, 2018 in press). In particular the article draws from our chapter in the edited collection by Godfrey and Brown, An Eco-system for Research Engaged Schools (Wisby and Whitty, forthcoming). I hope that Geoff would have been pleased with this adaptation of that chapter. Both he and his voice in the debates covered here will be sorely missed.
The importance of breadth and space
Our first objective in this article is to provide an overview of how the relationship between educational research and practice has developed over recent decades in relation to the schools system in England and to challenge the ‘what works’ agenda that is currently to the fore in national policy. This agenda sets a premium on large trials with a view to providing ‘the’ evidence base for educational practice. By contrast, we take an inclusive and pragmatic approach to research-informed practice in education.
Our second objective is to draw out the implications of that position for understandings of teacher professionalism and for teacher professional development. We begin by noting the many different traditions that comprise the field of education studies, but also how the ‘what works’ agenda has come to dominate ‘official’ understandings and rhetoric – certainly in England and the US, but also increasingly so in other countries around the world. We then problematize the ‘what works’ approach in terms of its implications for educational research, research-informed practice and notions of teacher professionalism. We go on to argue for a richer conception of teacher professionalism than the ‘technician’ status the ‘what works’ model implies.
We conclude that the focus in relation to research-informed practice should be the weaving together of evidence from different epistemological traditions – which requires a broad appreciation of educational research, and the grounding and space to develop that.
An international anatomy of educational research
In 2013 John Furlong published Education: An anatomy of a discipline, which audited the range and institutional settings of education studies in the UK, providing a ‘state of the discipline’ report (Furlong, 2013). That work would lead to a further study, conducted by John and Geoff, to examine the nature of education studies internationally (Whitty and Furlong, 2017). This survey of education studies in seven countries identified 12 approaches in the study of education, which could be grouped into three main clusters:
- academic knowledge traditions (e.g. the history of education, or comparative education), which start from academic rather than practitioner concerns, albeit they may offer valuable insights for practitioners, certainly pertaining to their professionalism if not their classroom practice;
- practical knowledge traditions (e.g. the competency movement or what Whitty and Furlong call ‘Networked Professional Knowledge Production’), which derive their research questions from issues faced by practitioners in the classroom, albeit they sometimes draw on elements of academic knowledge;
- integrated knowledge traditions (including established approaches such as action research and newer models like ‘Learning Sciences’), which attempt to combine both academic and practical knowledge and seek to contribute to both theory and practice.