Developing Research-Literate Teachers – TeacherToolkit
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How do we encourage more teachers to be guided by academic research and become critical consumers?
The Education Endowment Foundation has published a short guide to help teachers and schools become research-informed …
If you’ve not seen this document, it’s worth reviewing and sharing it with colleagues.
Here is quick summary without reproducing the material, plus my contributions:
There are four key sections:
- What is research evidence
- Different types of research
- How to critically evaluate research
- How to use research to inform classroom practice.
When the general public, and sometimes teachers, say that they have been ‘researching’, by definition, it is not academic research. In most cases, it is likely to be secondary research unless they are conducting data collection directly, for example, during a masters degree or for a national professional qualification (NPQ).
Some simple differences:
- Academic research draws upon systematic processes and specific questions.
- School-based research generally gathers data/analysis from students.
- The former can be completed using experiments, systematic reviews and interviews.
- The latter draws upon attendance, data, student voice, or behaviour logs.
- It’s knowing the difference between each end of the research spectrum: positivism and subjectivism.
Top tips and resources
Some past content I have published, which will help:
- How to think like a researcher without really trying.
- Five tips for teachers to engage with research.
- What are the Department for Education currently researching? (2024)
- Do research-informed teachers and schools achieve better results?
- The seven hallmarks of research-informed schools.
- Access open PDF articles on Google Scholar.
This resource below provides a matrix to help teachers breakdown the complex anatomy of academic articles into a teacher-friendly table, breaking down sections into digestible parts. It is designed to demystify academic research so that teachers can foster a deeper understanding and engagement with texts.
This 11-page PDF file below helps teachers understand research methods, tactics, and techniques and identify them explicitly. It helps them understand what academic frameworks are used in published work. It is also useful to help teachers develop more rigorous approaches to action research in their classroom and learn about different approaches, theories, and perspectives.
In an effort to bridge the gap between academic theories and classroom practices, having started this journey mysefl as a teacher, it is important that teachers are provided with practical ideas tohelp demystify and critically engage with scholarly work.
I hope these resources help you to enhance your understanding of educational research …
