Making connections
Teachers make crucial classroom decisions on a minute-by-minute basis and, unusually amongst the professions, they mainly do so alone. A multiplicity of ideas and influences shape these decisions – previous experience, peer influence, government regulations and inspectorate expectations. Somehow, evidence from research has to find its way into the mix.
The means by which such evidence reaches the practitioner is, at least in England, haphazard and the tools needed to put it to use, under-developed.
The various bodies responsible for setting the research agenda, producing research, developing useful materials from it and using them to improve practice add up to a kind of ecosystem. This article is about efforts to develop collaboration across the poorly connected parts of this ecosystem.
Paradoxically, perhaps, the argument is not itself based on research evidence; it is a reflection on initiatives at local and national levels with which I have been involved, over the decades as teacher, college leader, research manager and, ultimately reformer. Better skip this article if you are looking for effect sizes or a systematic review! A strange thing to find oneself saying, given how important they both are.
Local level - tackling a number of hurdles