What is researchED?

Tom Bennett, director of 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.'

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 thebenefit of educational

research and the teaching profession as a whole.

… 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.

Tom Bennet’s blog:

Dr Gary Jones

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 evidence-based 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.

Lisa Pettifer’s 50 shades of uncertainty in educational researchhttps://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.

Alex Quigley, Director of Learning and Research at Huntington Secondary School, York

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 counter-reformation 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.

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.

Dr Gary Jones

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.