Enquiry as the bedrock of the school system
How can research be integrated into the lives of teachers and leaders as part of the structures and cultures of the school? Research-engaged schools promote enquiry stances by teachers as an integral part of their ongoing professional development. Such schools encourage the use of published research and other school evidence; they are outward looking and connect to the research community. This engagement occurs through interconnections from the macro to the micro level of the school ecosystem and ultimately affects the lives of young learners. In this article we will explore the dimensions and elements of what we mean by the school ecosystem and how we see research engaged professional learning as a fundamental part of this.
Ecosystems and levels
The concept of the school as an ecosystem has been influenced by Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1992) ecosystems model used in developmental psychology. Bronfenbrenner suggested that in order to study children in a way that led to high “ecological validity”, - i.e. applying to real life contexts - then we needed to take account of the various subsystems within which children developed. For instance, if we were studying children’s classroom behaviour or mental health, we may wish to analyse their peer group interactions (the micro system) and their family’s economic and social context (mesosystem). In addition, if the child misses school or otherwise gets into difficulties adapting to school life, policies to do with truancy or exclusion may have an impact on how he or she is subsequently punished or supported by the school (the exosystem). In turn, cultural and societal beliefs about school and family life (the macrosystem) influence the exo, meso and microsystems by shaping the way that schools are valued, funded, organized and evaluated. The developmental rate of the changes at each level – e.g. the child’s physical, cognitive and emotional development (the chronosystem) could also be studied in relation to their transition through school years, or alongside curriculum reforms. Bronfenbrenner believed that by studying children in such a way we avoid over simplifying the causal links that lead to various outcomes in their lives; we also consciously connect the values and beliefs of society to the eventual impact they have at the micro-level.
This model has much potential when applied to a school system. Here the institution or organisational level is in sharpest focus (meso-level) and we are challenged to think about the nature of influence of political values on the types of schools we have; the working environments they create for staff and children; and the ways that schools work together to meet the aims of the education system. Ultimately, these higher-level elements of the ecosystem will have an effect on the micro systems that most impact on children’s lives, shaping the way that teachers and other adults educate them. Box 1, below, outlines how such a model can be applied to the school system and later sections in this article focus on how such an ecosystem can be enhanced or enriched through research engagement.
Box 1. Ecosystem levels as applied to the school system
- The macrosystem: This consists of the overarching beliefs and values in society that affect the school system, such as belief that parents should be able to choose their children’s schools and that school’s need to be measured, ranked and held accountable for ‘outcomes’.
- The exosystem: This is the concrete manifestation of the macrosystem. This might include government policies to increase school autonomy and the use of school inspections and the publication of school league tables. This level is also sometimes used to describe the indirect environment, for instance networks or other organisations that connect to the school.
- The mesosystem: This is the interaction between elements of the microsystem with the immediate environment, specifically the ‘workings’ of a school as an organization or institution. This could include a school policy to set up professional learning communities or in the use of data to inform decisions by school leaders.
- The microsystem: This is the immediate educational environment of the child, especially the child as ‘learner’ in the classroom, their relationships with teachers, peers, parents and other staff. The above levels may influence the methods by which children are taught and assessed, placed into ability groups and so on.
- The chronosystem: The pace of change or development at each and any sub level of the ecosystem. For instance, a child’s cognitive maturation can be studied alongside transitions from the primary phase to the secondary phase of education. Attempts to improve or change teaching practice can be contrasted or set within the context of often rapid policy changes introduced by new governments, eager to force through reforms to the school system.
Some key issues
This ecosystems framing addresses three key issues that we consider essential to the study of research-engaged schools: First, the need to connect all school change ultimately to its intended educational impact on children, and by corollary to society; second, to ensure that elements of the system - especially at the individual school level - are not viewed in isolation; and third, to see system change as both interconnected and working in patterns of multi-directional cause and effect.
The first issue addresses the need to understand the way the macro system indirectly impacts on the microsystems of school children. As such, tracing the effect of educational policies purely on the performance of schools in inspection reports or league tables is insufficient – this both stops short of the child’s microsystem and too narrowly measures outcomes. In order to link the values that drive school policies to their eventual impact on students, each reform must be judged in terms of its stated aim; for instance to develop children’s mental and physical well-being, to eliminate inequalities in student educational outcomes, or to build citizens fit to enter democratic society and to have the means to influence it.
In terms of the second issue, we recognize that research-engaged schools are meso and exo-level organisations with numerous vertical and horizontal connections in the ecosystem. We know from previous work on school effectiveness that the effect of the teacher on a child’s academic attainment is more than the indirect effect of the school’s overall effectiveness (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). More generally we might conclude that the quality of the child’s parenting and the home environment has considerable effect on educational outcomes for children and is more important than teaching and that teaching has more importance than the quality of school leadership (Robinson, 2011). Thus the extent to which the school contributes to a system that fosters high quality teaching, support and parental engagement to emerge, should be our main concern. In turn, we need to consider that there are factors outside of the school itself, e.g. the support of local educational authority/district or the role of teacher professional bodies, that also impact on the quality of teaching, the ability of parents to engage in their children’s education and so on.