Research engagement - more distance to travel
Despite recent policies to support evidence-informed teaching, and a number of important practical developments including the launch of the Chartered College of Teaching, the development of the Research Schools network, and the expansion of the researchED initiative, we still don’t know a great deal about the current extent or depth of evidence-informed practice across schools in England. In this article we present findings from a survey co-developed by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which captured information about this issue in late 2014. It suggests that at this point, research was having only a small to moderate influence on decision making relative to other sources, despite teachers generally reporting a positive disposition towards research. Additionally, it suggests that this positive disposition was not necessarily transferring into an increased conceptual understanding about “what the research says”. This article discusses implications of these findings in the context of current developments towards evidence-informed practice, including the EEF’s approaches to supporting research engagement and use.
The rise of Evidenced informed practice
Anyone with an eye on recent educational developments will be aware of an increase in discussion and activity around “evidence-informed practice” (EIP). A number of research studies have suggested that evidence-informed schools have an important role to play in effective education systems (Brown, 2017; CUREE, 2015; Greany, 2015; Mincu, 2014; Schleicher, 2011), with a clearer understanding emerging of how research evidence can feed into those systems (Sharples, 2013) and of how schools themselves can support effective research engagement (Brown, 2015; Brown and Zhang, 2016; Brown 2017). Concurrently, there has been a surge in teacher demand for evidence, illustrated by the rapid rise of grass-roots initiatives like researchEd1, the Research Schools network2 and the launch of the Chartered College of Teaching3. This differentiates the current decade from previous years in which calls for EIP came, predominantly, although not exclusively, from university academics and researchers (see, for example, Hargreaves, 1996; Weiss, 1979). Notable examples of historic developments not driven by universities or academia include the work of Handscomb and MacBeath (2003) on The Research Engaged School, the National Teacher Research Panel (NTRP), an independent group of teachers and headteachers supported by the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE)4; and the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN), a network of teacher action researchers hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University’s Education and Social Research Institute,5 among others.
How much EIP is there?
Despite policies to support evidence-informed teaching, and a number of important practical developments, we still don’t know a great deal about the current extent or depth of EIP across schools in England. The NFER and EIP survey6 was developed to provide a measure of research engagement that could be applied across a series of projects, funded by the EEF, which aim to increase schools’ awareness, and use, of research evidence7. It was intended also to inform the EEF’s overall approach to scaling-up and mobilising evidence – a key priority for the organisation in the second five years of its life.
The following points are important in interpreting the results:
- Evidence is a broad term. There are many forms of evidence at a teacher’s disposal including classroom data, pupil performance data, information from research, management data and, of course, professional judgment. It is the combined application of these different forms of evidence that creates EIP.
- Information from research tends to be used less frequently as a source of evidence. For this reason, we developed our survey to focus specifically on the extent and nature of teachers’ uses of research evidence as an important component of EIP.
- Research evidence was defined in the survey as: “paper or web-based articles, reports, books or summaries based on academic research”. We used the term “academic research” to clearly distinguish between research carried out in universities or professional research organisations, and other sources such as comment pieces; books written by practitioners; or practice information shared at teacher gatherings.
The data were collected in late 2014, hence should be seen as a snapshot of research engagement at that time. Elements of the survey will be repeated in the academic year 2017-18, hopefully providing an indication of how research engagement has changed over this period.
Research method
Our survey was piloted in November 2014 with a sample of 1,200 secondary and 900 primary schools. Each school was provided with five copies of the questionnaire to be completed by up to five members of staff, equating to samples of 4,500 primary and 6,000 secondary teachers respectively (10,500 teachers in total). We offered a £5 incentive to the first 350 responding teachers. We quickly achieved 509 responses across 256 schools (an average response of two teachers per school and an achieved response rate of just under five per cent of sampled teachers).