What is researchED?
‘researchED isn't about fetishising research, or demanding
that everything in education is decided by research - far
from it. In fact, I'd say there were whole oceans of the
school experience that are more to do with craft.
But there are huge areas that are amenable to scientific
investigation, and other areas where other disciplines,
such as psychology, can offer useful insights.
It's time teachers started insisting on evidence before
being expected to accept every claim and magic bullet
sent their way. It's time for a quiet revolution.'
Tom Bennett, director of researchED
Defining the aims of researchED :
1. To raise the research literacy of educators, in order for them to possess the critical skills
necessary to challenge and understand the quality of research they encounter.
2. To bring together as many parties affected by educational research - e.g. teachers,
academics, researchers, policy makers, teacher-trainers - in order to establish healthy
relationships where field-specific expertise is pooled usefully.
3. To promote collaboration between research-users and research-creators so that
educators become more involved in the questions posed for research to answer, the data
generated in that process, and in the consideration of the meaning of that data.
4. To help educators become as aware as possible of significant obstacles - e.g. biases - in
their own understanding of learning and education, and to locate the best methods of
empirical enquiry and analysis in those fields.
5. To promote, where possible, research of any discipline that has been shown to have
significant evidence of impact in education, and to challenge research that lacks integrity, or
has been shown to be based on doubtful methodologies.
6. To explore 'what works' in the field of education, and to explore what the concepts
contained in that statement might mean, as well as to consider the limitations of scientific
enquiry in this area as well as the opportunities.
researchED conferences
seek […] to bring
members of the
academic, research,
educator and
intermediary
communities together in
face to face encounters.
We’ve seen in the UK the
kind of powerful
collaborations that can
ensue, to the
benefit of educational
research and the teaching
profession as a whole.
Tom Bennet’s blog:
… most people seemed to
embrace the vision that
researchED attempts to
bring – that teachers have
the right to engage with
research, to be critical
consumers, users, even
generators, but certainly
participants in the great
vivarium of education. By
the end of play I had offers
from no fewer than five
schools to hold researchED
events in Melbourne, Perth,
Brisbane and Cairns.
Strewth. Oh yes, and New
Zealand. So there's that.
However, as with every researchED event I have attended,
researchED Sydney provided an incredible stimulus for my own
thinking about research and its relationship to classroom
practice and school leadership, so here goes.
There is much work to do to de-toxify evidence-based practice
'brand'. Too often critics of evidence-based practice or evidencebased education fail to recognise, or deliberately chose to
ignore, that evidence-based practice draws on four sources of
evidence - academic research, stakeholder views, organisational
evidence and professional judgement.
With the above in mind, there is also a lack of a shared
understanding amongst teachers and educators about what we
mean by terms such as research, disciplined inquiry or
evaluation. This lack of a shared understanding, or at the very
least a shared understanding of differences in approach, makes
constructive dialogue on a range of issues more difficult.
Dr Gary Jones
Lisa Pettifer’s 50 shades of uncertainty in
educational research
https://lisa7pettifer.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/50-shades-of-uncertainty-in-educational-research/
It's going to take a bit of processing, but I hope that
there's soil in this landscape for the ideas that animate
researchED to take root. That teachers can, using social
media, catalyse their own professional development by
collaboration, cooperation, and investigation.
From the people I met, there certainly isn't a lack of
talent, ambition and enthusiasm.
Tom Bennett, Director of
http://www.workingoutwhatworks.com/en-GB/Resource-library
The Literacy Octopus
• researchED is involved in a major new
initiative to help teachers to improve
pupils’ Key Stage 2 literacy, all based on
the latest research evidence.
• The initiative is funded by the Education
Endowment Foundation (EEF),
Department for Education and the
London Schools Excellence Fund, and is
exploring a range of evidence-based
approaches to supporting schools'
literacy development and their impact
on pupil attainment.
The Research Leads Network
One topic of discussion among the group that I was involved
in was the potential for Research Leads in schools – a small,
but significant, proposal to begin brokering the expertise of
Higher Education institutions with schools and classroom
teachers. It was one of many workable suggestions that would
help partnerships mobilise the knowledge of research
evidence in schools.
The nascent role of the Research Lead is already in early
development. Only this Saturday, ResearchEd initiated the first
national Research Lead Network event (supported by NFER
and CfBT). Speakers such as Professor Rob Coe, David Weston,
Keven Bartle and Sam Freedman, spoke about the potential of
a Research Lead network to foster closer collaboration
between schools, universities and researchers. Research Leads
met, networked and looked ahead to building deeper
partnerships and to support one another.
Linked to my nascent role as a Research Lead, in
December I attended a ResearchEd event, which saw
Research Leads networking, connecting their questions
and interests.
It was heartening to see the grassroots movement
congregating with the purpose of seeking to ask better
questions in their role as teachers and school leaders.
Of course, the accusation of some sort of counterreformation worshipping at the altar of evidence is
leveled at ResearchEd, but the nature of everything I have
seen and experienced has been highly self-critical. There
is no notion that research-evidence is the miracle
‘answer’, only that it will help guide us to asking better
questions.
Alex Quigley, Director of Learning and Research at
Huntington Secondary School, York
So what does a Research Lead do, by our reckoning?
The common principles that we agreed are:
• they help teachers find the right question/s
• they help find the research evidence
• they help appraise the evidence
• they help translate the evidence
• they help share the evidence
• they help embed the evidence
• they help evaluate the evidence.
Of course, much is to be done if this role is to
become a scalable reality (if that proves a desirable
outcome), but the prospect is promising despite the
many obstacles that still stand in our way.
So what does this all mean for the school research lead, well for me I think
there are a number of implications.
• Research leads need to recognise that the purpose of research and
evidence-based practice within schools is to support the development of
'practical wisdom' within the school rather than attempting to emulate the
'research' undertaken in universities.
• Research leads should give thought as to what are the aims of a research or
evidence informed school, is this desirable and what should be done?
• Research leads should acknowledge that through the process of
'research/evidence-based activity there will be winners and possibly losers which may include pupils and colleagues.
• Research leads should strive to ensure that the outcomes of
research/evidence-based activity is communicated to colleagues in a way
which is meaningful and which informs practice.
• Research leads should focus school research efforts on things that matter to
their pupils, colleagues, school and local community.
• Research leads need to recognise that to become a virtuoso in such a role
will take time and will involve a process of going from novice to higher
levels of expertise, and maybe the best we can hope for is for research
leads to be competent rather than proficient or expert as researchers.
Dr Gary Jones