The Teacher's Guide to Research

Engaging with, Applying and Conducting Research in the Classroom

Jonathan Firth

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429811135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

This accessible guide provides practical support on becoming research engaged and research active within the school and beyond. It explores the meaning of research and clarifies multiple types of research which lead to different views on 'what works', all whilst showing how to engage with the latest educational findings and how to conduct classroom-based research as part of career-long professional development.

Divided into three parts, this book examines the various understandings of being 'research-engaged' and covers key issues such as:

• Finding and interpreting research
• How to apply and evaluate findings in reliable ways
• Planning and carrying out a classroom-based project
• Building a culture of research within a school
• Establishing local research networks
• Publishing work

Illustrated with inspiring examples of how to these implement ideas in schools, The Teachers' Guide to Research is perfect for practicing schools teachers, student teachers and educational leaders who are looking to expand their research knowledge and rekindle their professional curiosity.

PART 1

Research for the teacher

This part looks at the practical issues involved in engaging with research. We consider why it should be done at all as part of your professional practice (Chapter 1), and how to make time for it (Chapter 2). We then move on to the skills involved in accessing research evidence and applying interventions based on this evidence (Chapters 3–5), and then consider how to evaluate, in an unbiased way, whether a change has actually been beneficial (Chapter 6).

This part is, therefore, very much focused on learning about and using existing research. The later two parts (‘the teacher as researcher’ and ‘the networked teacher-researcher’) look at issues around conducting and disseminating research of your own.

1	Why teachers should engage with research

Throughout school learning, we aim for our pupils to be inspired, curious and questioning. We also expect the curriculum of school education to be based on facts, derived from a sound and reliable body of scientific evidence and wisdom, not the opinions of the few, or the fashions of the day.

It is strange, therefore, how different the picture is when it comes to research and its relationship with classroom practice—engaging with research is not typically seen as a part of the teacher’s role.¹ Before we get into the issue of when and how to engage with research (Chapters 2–6), let’s first consider why we might wish to do it in the first place.

Responding to events

The classroom is not a predictable place. Teaching and sitting exams is sometimes unfavourably compared to a factory process, but as every teacher knows, there are far too many unpredictable events—from behaviour to pupil responses to interruptions—for it to be possible to plan or script everything to the letter. Teaching is, therefore, a process that requires a high level of decision making and a fair amount of improvisation.

In both the lesson planning stage, the lesson itself, and the aftermath (feedback, review, further planning), a teacher therefore has to make judgement calls about what to do and when to do it. Should a learner be given feedback now, or later or not at all? Should we reward successful work? Should the class work individually or in pairs?

It could be argued that there are two main sources of information when making these decisions:

• Experience. Experienced teachers make better decisions than novices, in part because they have made many mistakes in the past, and are able to avoid similar mistakes in the future by changing their own actions.

• Research. Research evidence can tell us what has been done in other comparable circumstances and what the outcome was.

These two sources of information can and should both feed into the teacher’s professional decision-making process. Realistically, research cannot replace experience—if it could, then it would be possible to train the perfect teacher simply by exposing them to theory and research evidence.

Likewise however, experience cannot entirely replace evidence. If it could, then research wouldn’t actually be necessary! If any call could be made just by drawing on experience, then we could simply ask experienced teachers what to do. Unfortunately, reality shows us that even very experienced teachers harbour misconceptions about how learning and behaviour work, and that the outcome of research is often surprising and counterintuitive (see discussion on pp. 11–13).

Should you review this topic now, or tomorrow or in a month’s time? Should you mark this essay with detailed comments, or ask the pupils to peer mark? Should you use real-world examples and let pupils figure out the rules, or present ideas more theoretically? For these and hundreds of other decisions, research can point the way in areas where our intuitive sense of what’s effective can let us down. Research can guide us towards choices which lead to better learning—learning that pupils retain over the long term and are able to transfer to multiple situations throughout life. It can also help us to improve pupil engagement, and save time by weeding out ineffective practices.

Just as with other professions, then, such as medicine or engineering, our professional experience can be (and arguably should be) enhanced by engaging with research findings from science or social science. This allows the professional to make informed decisions. In this book, we will explore how research engagement can complement, not replace, other aspects of a teacher’s professionalism.

Misconceptions and the role of evidence

Some situations within a teacher’s role are fairly easy to judge simply on the basis of intuition and common sense: we can all see whether a pupil is upset, for example, and a lack of motivation is usually clearly evident too.

However, as noted above, education is subject to many misconceptions, and some aspects of human thinking and learning are not intuitive (see From the research on p. 11). Creativity is a good example—it’s not immediately obvious what processes will lead to someone having a worthwhile creative idea. Some aspect of learning are similarly hard to judge; pupils can leave the classroom confident that they have learned, and the teacher may also be confident if the class have successfully completed a quiz or exit pass at the end of the session. But what about forgetting? If the key information is forgotten within a few hours or weeks, it doesn’t seem reasonable to say that it has been learned, even if performance was very good in the short term. Some researchers into memory have drawn a distinction between performance and learning. It may only be possible to infer learning by testing pupils after a delay, and doing so shows that forgetting has a much greater and faster impact than tends to be anticipated.

This raises a broader issue—are the views of teachers and their pupils subject to misconceptions about how learning works, and if so, can we trust ‘common sense’ approaches to the learning process, and how do these relate to the role of research evidence?

From the research

Key issue: is teaching mainly a matter of common sense? Teachers may feel that they can rely on their gut feeling, particularly after they have accumulated many years of classroom experience. Perhaps, in fact, teaching is more of an art than a science. But at times, our gut feeling may conflict with the scientific evidence on a topic. So which is more reliable?

What the research says: teaching is a highly complex skill. It is one of the most demanding of all professions, because it involves not just dealing with human beings (which are always more complex than physical objects) but modifying something intangible— the formation of new memories. Understandably, then, there are areas where research will highlight issues that conflict with cultural norms and ‘common sense’ practices.

Does this mean that all research will show mainstream teaching practice to be wrong? Not at all. Some research will confirm what you thought already, and this is to be welcomed—it would be strange and disturbing if we found out that teachers were getting every single thing wrong! However, when research papers do tell us that common classroom practices are ineffective or inefficient, this is also to be welcomed because it points the way towards improvements that can be made. Research findings may present alternatives that are easier to do, or lead to a more lasting impact.

Cognitive psychologists Robert and Elizabeth Bjork and colleagues have studied a number of counterintuitive findings in education. Among other things, they have shown that reducing the frequency and amount of feedback results in more errors in the short term, but better learning in the long term.² In addition, waiting a couple of weeks before consolidation rather than doing it soon after a lesson runs counter to standard teaching practice, but research on the spacing effect suggests that doing so is beneficial (at least in most circumstances—more on adapting these findings to your own classroom in Chapter 4).

Together, these findings have been described as desirable difficulties. They are features of the learning situation that appear to make learning harder and more error-prone (in other words, they harm performance) and are therefore usually avoided by learners and teachers alike, but which lead to more durable learning in the long run. Understanding these areas can help teachers to cut out ineffective practices, and can also help sound practices to be used in the right way and in the right context.

What exactly do we mean by ‘evidence’?

From what has been said so far, evidence can be seen as fundamental to improving education. For changes to be made, they need to be based on sound, unbiased research evidence, and account for some of the limited ideas which can result from over-reliance on intuition.

But what exactly is evidence? It can take many forms. Later chapters in this book will compare some of the different research methods that can be used within education, some of which you may choose to try out for yourself. For now, suffice to say that there are many ways of gathering evidence, and all have their flaws. It certainly shouldn’t be assumed that the term only applies to large-scale studies such as randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Your notes from talking to a parent is a form of evidence, as is your class’s work, their test scores and anything else that provides information about their progress. All of these forms of evidence could influence our decision-making process.

Published research evidence is based on one or more context—contexts that differ from your own. While this can be a flaw, such work is also more likely to illuminate general principles. For example, a study that looks at motivation over several different primary classes might help us to understand how motivation works in general terms, not just what one of your learners or their dad thinks about the current reading book.

Even though such evidence cannot override the specifics of our classes and their needs or our professional or ethical judgement, they can add another dimension to it, ensuring that any choices are research-based as well as being informed by our own experiences.

Viewing evidence in this way can fundamentally change how we see teacher professionalism. Teachers are all too often placed in a situation where they are told what good practice looks like, and then observed to ensure that this is what they are doing—a ‘top-down’ approach to research that leads to stress, not research engagement.³ Instead, this book advocates becoming actively and autonomously research engaged, so that teachers find themselves in the position of making these educational judgements for themselves while still working within school priorities and policies. What’s more, rather than the generic advice that teaching authorities and governments can give, teachers can combine an understanding of evidence with their professional knowledge of their learners. This puts them in the best position to be the decision makers in education.⁴

The research-engaged teacher may go through...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 Research for the Teacher
• Part 2 the Teacher as Researcher
• Part 3 the Networked Teacher-Researcher
• Glossary
• Index