Becoming a research-informed teacher; becoming a research-informed school

Becoming research-informed offers real potential for supporting school improvement (BERA-RSA, 2014), but time, workload and high-stakes accountability are potential barriers for teachers (Mincu, 2013). There are some fantastic resources out there to help schools become research-informed, but I want to reflect on my own experience of becoming 'research literate', as well as highlighting how we can develop ‘research literacy’ in schools.

What is research literacy?

Research literacy is:

“the extent to which teachers and school and college leaders are familiar with a range of research methods, with the latest research findings and with the implications of this research for their day-to-day practice, and for education policy and practice more broadly. To be research literate is to ‘get’ research – to understand why it is important and what might be learnt from it, and to maintain a sense of critical appreciation and healthy scepticism throughout” (BERA-RSA, 2014, p. 40).

I love that this definition encompasses two benefits of becoming research-informed:

1) The chance to read about the outcomes of other studies

2) The “critical appreciation and healthy scepticism” that should characterise a research-informed culture

This might seem like an obvious point, but teachers can sometimes feel disempowered by research findings – particularly if these contradict our own intuition or seem to fly in the face of what we know about our own school contexts. It is critical engagement that enables us to see what might be useful in our classrooms and to understand why. Merely summarising studies and treating their findings as universal truths does not make a school research-informed.

Teacher-researchers/researcher-teachers: a personal perspective

I taught a session on the Open University's MA Education a few weeks ago and I was blown away by the ways in which our students – most of whom are full-time teachers and leaders in schools – were reflecting on theory, policy and practice. A number of them shared their own experiences of CPD, considering this in light of Lave and Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ theory. This theory proposes that an individual moves from the periphery of a group to its core as they take on more of its activities, with their identity and self-concept reflecting this trajectory. As educators, we are part of many ‘communities of practice’. From our faculties (if we are secondary subject teachers) to our year teams (if we are primary teachers), we are members of smaller-scale communities. On a larger scale, we are part of our school’s ‘community of practice’. Even more broadly, we can be members of research associations like BERA or professional associations like the Chartered College. The more involved we are in these communities, the more important they become to how we see ourselves. If we see ourselves as teacher-researchers, then this dual membership of two seemingly distinct ‘communities of practice’ can make our identities even more complex.

I’ve always been a research-informed teacher. I studied for optional MA credits alongside my training year on the Graduate Teacher Programme, conducting an action-research project into the connections between tactile resources, vocabulary recognition and working memory (I know, you’d have thought I’d have ended up a psychologist with that kind of focus!) with my Year 10 class. At that point, I felt like I was ‘playing’ at conducting educational research and I still wasn’t entirely sure what it was. This perhaps says more about my own feelings of imposter syndrome – I’ve since met incredibly impressive, research-informed trainee teachers and other school staff who have not been so sheepish about their interests. I often wonder why I was so self-effacing about my own intellectual curiosity in those early days. However, by the time that I’d reached middle leadership roles, my interest in research had become an itch I needed to scratch. I had so many questions about classroom orthodoxies. Whilst I felt I knew what worked for me and my team in our classrooms, my reasons for these successes were intuitive rather than research-informed. Whilst this kind of teacher intuition is a valuable resource, I wanted to know more about how to evaluate policies and practices in different ways. I wanted to be able to replicate my own successes as a practitioner in other classrooms, but I knew that a ‘copy and paste’ approach was not good enough.

Studying for a Master's degree in Education can be an intense experience. Many teachers juggle full-time work with part-time study: a number of our students have told us that they wish they had more time to devote to the academic reading and reflection that is at the core of the programme. Many of them squeeze as much study as possible into weekends and school holidays, pushing themselves to the limit in their tireless pursuit of better teaching, better learning, better schools, and better lives for the young people they work with. My own MA Education was life changing. I was able to deepen my understanding of my own subject, studying modules taught by staff from the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research into Arts, Creativity and Literacies, as well as engaging with modules about practitioner-based inquiry and mental wellbeing in schools. I loved every minute of it and it was amazing to engage with the ‘gap’ between theory and practice in my own work. I conducted interviews about teacher agency with teachers in a school with which I was professionally connected. I conducted a policy analysis, considering the ways in which text choice for students had been enshrined as a key part of the new A-level English literature qualifications, but was constrained in some schools by logistical challenges like timetabling or teacher confidence. I researched reading for pleasure in a small primary school, exploring how stories can be woven into the very fabric of our school communities, extending their reach far beyond the pages of printed books. Every time that I learned something new, read another paper, attended another conference, I was building up my own library of possible approaches, possible perspectives, possible tools for engaging with educational challenges.

I make no secret of my aspirations to become a school leader in the future. I feel that my MA Education helped me to step outside of my own teacher training and away from the partial perspectives I had gained from my experiences in the schools I had worked in, developing a deeper understanding of the education sector in its broadest sense. I was very lucky in that I worked with schools alongside my studies – leading on a school-based teacher training hub for PGCE Primary and Secondary students across a partnership of 17 schools and working as an education consultant. I really was able to bring theory and practice together to explore how research-informed practice could work for me, my colleagues and my students.

Top tips:

If you’re considering introducing your school staff to research, I’d recommend the following:

- Curate a collection of relevant academic papers

Identifying and reading academic literature is a skill that many teachers won’t have used since they studied for a PGCE. Moreover, access to academic journals can be restricted by paywalls. Rather than frustrating staff by asking them to hunt for papers themselves, put together a collection that links to some of the key issues you’re exploring in school at the moment. The British Library has some great advice on getting hold of ‘open access’ publications: https://www.bl.uk/help/open-access-resources-for-research

- Don’t be afraid to teach aspects of ‘research literacy’

Research-informed practice offers the opportunity to draw on the findings of other researchers as well as to use research skills to evaluate our own practice (Scott and McNeish, 2013). Introducing teachers to the features of some popular research methods and to some key concepts in research design could be a great way to support this. If you don’t feel like you have the level of expertise for this within your own Senior Leadership Team, then you could reach out to a local university-based ITE provider and ask them if they’d be interested in delivering a workshop or two in school, perhaps tied to their own MA Education programme.

- If you can contribute towards staff conducting postgraduate study then do!

I know budgets are strained in so many schools at the moment, but if there is any loose change in the CPD budget then you could consider supporting staff’s postgraduate studies with this. Whilst you might not be able to fund a whole postgraduate degree, a small contribution might make all the difference to a member of staff who has been thinking about this already. Some schools commit significant sums to developing a research-informed culture. I’ve worked with MATs that have arranged for MA programmes to be delivered in school, negotiated discounted rates with the university, and then funded these for staff who were interested. In such situations, staff could sign an agreement to contribute to the cost of the MA if they were to leave soon afterwards (in order for schools to ensure this investment benefits their own pupils in the short and medium-term).

If you’re interested in reading more on this topic, Megan Mansworth (2021) wrote an interesting article in Impact which makes recommendations for how to encourage teachers to engage with research as part of school CPD culture. I’d love to hear more about other schools and teachers that are engaging in research and enquiry, beyond those that I’m involved in through my work.

References

BERA-RSA (2014) ‘RESEARCH AND THE TEACHING PROFESSION: Building the capacity for a self-improving education system’. Available at: https://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BERA-RSA-Research-Teaching-Profession-FULL-REPORT-for-web.pdf.

Mansworth, M. (2021) ‘Developing a school-wide culture of research and evidence-informed practice’, My College. Available at: https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/developing-a-school-wide-culture-of-research-and-evidence-informed-practice/ (Accessed: 9 February 2022).

Mincu, M. (2013) BERA Inquiry paper 6. Teacher Quality and School improvement: What is the role of research? doi:10.13140/RG.2.2.32009.24169.

Scott, S. and McNeish, D. (2013) ‘School leadership evidence review: using research evidence to support school improvement’. Department for Education. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-leadership-evidence-review-using-research-evidence-to-support-school-improvement.