Effective, meaningful, manageable, achievable, useful research doesn't just happen. It is the result of the careful consideration of the context which you are working in â and with â linked to your own inspirations and aspirations. In addition to the careful identification and clarification of your research focus, your success will be based upon your reading around the subject to select from existing ideas and findings in order to be able to confidently determine what should be asked, of whom and how the evidence might be collected. If you allow yourself to stand back from the process, it should be possible to perceive parallels between planning for research and planning for teaching.
This section of the book explores the initial research planning processes, taking you from the identification of the initial ideas through to the point where your have clarified the purpose of your research and have assimilated the lessons from existing theories and findings from published research.
By the conclusion of this chapter it is anticipated that you will have considered and be able to:
- understand the role of research to inform and improve practice;
- understand the importance of exploring potential options before acting and evaluating the impact of initiatives;
- appreciate the value of educational research to the school/college practitioner.
This chapter provides an examination of the need, for those working in schools and colleges, to develop and utilise research skills for their own personal professional development and organisational improvement. While this chapter will not tell you what to do or how to do it (later chapters will do that), it will provide you with an appreciation, hopefully an understanding, of why. Developing an understanding of why you are doing something (indeed why there is a need for you to do something) will allow you to gain much more from the activity and give you much more control and understanding over the decisions that you will face with regard to how you will carry out your research.
By engaging with new ideas and research findings to develop new practices and evaluate curriculum change, educational practitioners (such as yourself) will be better placed to formalise and enhance personal and organisational reflective practice. Excellent teachers improve their effectiveness, that is how well the learners are learning, by asking the right questions and reflecting on the responses, in light of what they have previously experienced and read, before deciding upon a specific course of action. In many learning environments (classrooms) you may only have a fraction of a second to cycle through these processes. In order to become âeffectiveâ, in this sense, it is appropriate to deconstruct these processes, slow them down so that the different elements can be appreciated and valued and practised. In order to be able to scale down to the micro-decisions made constantly during a working day, it is appropriate to examine the processes on a much grander scale, to ask âbiggerâ questions and formally gather evidence to analyse in order to draw robust conclusions â and make the ârightâ decisions.
There is an increasing number of pressures on those working in the education profession (and those in training to join!) to become more âresearch activeâ in order to inform and develop their own practice. Teaching schools (TSs), as one of their key responsibilities (DfE, 2012) are required to lead âresearch and developmentâ within the profession. Consequently it must be seen as highly desirable that new entrants to the profession begin their careers with the skills and abilities to be capable and confident of using research skills to improve their own performance and also be able, with experience, to add to the body of knowledge within their profession.
The Move toward a âMasters-Levelâ Profession
It would be reasonable to suggest that in England from the perspective of early 2013 the qualifications expected of those entering the teaching profession are a little âconfusedâ. In the state-funded sector, pre-service qualifications are increasingly being delivered and assessed at postgraduate (that is to say masters) level, with post-degree level qualifications for entry to the teaching profession changing to accommodate this. However, certain sections of the state-funded provision, specifically âfree schoolsâ and, potentially, academies, are allowed to employ as teachers individuals who have not demonstrated that they have met the professional standards required as a prerequisite for employment in local authority (LA) maintained schools. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the bodies in England responsible for funding and supporting the quality of continuing professional development (CPD) provision for teachers, the Training and Development Agency for schools (TDA) and the General Teaching Council for England (GTC), both led the profession towards masters level in service professional development. The TDA, through its subsidisation of masters-level study as part of the PPD (postgraduate professional development) initiative, attempted to ensure that school teachers develop the skills to enable them to become more rigorous in the way that they perceive, reflect upon and analyse the impact of educational initiatives that they are involved in. Although significant funding was made available (TDA, 2007) and tangible professional and financial benefits were shown to accrue to participants, the uptake was relatively small. The GTC approach, through the Teacher Learning Academy (TLA) took a rather more direct approach. In order to progress up the pay spine teachers had to demonstrate their impact within (and beyond!) their school. Level 3 within the TLA criteria (Lord et al., 2009) equated to masters-level study in which teachers were expected to apply appropriately rigorous approaches to gathering and analysing evidence of their âimpactâ. Within current proposals (Coates, 2011) the ability to self-critique and robustly analyse learning and the learning environment are implicit within the expectations for âMaster Teacher Standardâ.
The National College has well a established professional qualification for school leaders, NPQH (National Professional Qualification for Headship), which has now reached such blanket coverage for prospective school leaders that additional qualifications (such as educational masters) are required to enable employers to distinguish more effectively between the candidates. The qualification for departmental or subject leaders, Leading from the Middle (LftM), has also reached a point where holders of the award are expected to convert it into âacademic currencyâ through gaining accreditation within a masters qualification. Pay and professional progression are increasingly being employed to encourage teachers to develop additional reflective and analytical skills. Within the maintained sector, teaching is increasingly moving away from being a graduate profession to becoming a masters profession.
With the loss of funding due to the economic turndown and change of government policy since 2010, coupled with the political drive to transfer the responsibility for initial and continuing training and development of the teaching profession from higher education to schools there is a change in the underlying nature of the provision available.
In higher education institutions (HEIs) the role of research activity is complicated by the academic expectations of the sector. While it is acknowledged, as Hattie and Marsh suggest:
Universities need to set as a mission goal the improvement of the nexus between research and teaching ⌠The aim is to increase the circumstances in which teaching and research have occasion to meet. (1996: 533)
The precise nature and focus of this research is less clear. Academics are expected to possess subject expertise within a field of study and to develop this expertise through further study and research, in doing so extending the boundaries of the field and enhancing knowledge within the subject. This ânewâ knowledge will then be used to inform the content of their teaching. However, to be an effective teacher of their subject they also need to be aware of, and be able to develop further, the effectiveness of their knowledge/skills transfer to their students. University academics are expected to both be effective researchers within their subject and effective teachers of their subject. Until the establishment of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education the focus for training in higher education was strongly biased towards the research requirements. Currently the Higher Education Academy (HEA) offers accreditation for courses (HEA, 2012) which support the development of the student learning experience â a pedagogic rather than subject focus. This distinction is crucial when focusing upon the precise nature of research which underpins personal professional development as a teacher (in any phase of education).
Outstanding schools (as defined by Ofsted inspection outcomes), since 2012 have had the option to apply to become âteaching schoolsâ, either individually or in clusters, to support and develop the quality of the profession through the provision of Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and CPD courses, coaching and consultancy. While many TSs have long established links with HEIs for both provision of professional training and research activity, others are still in various stages of development. Through the National College there are some opportunities for sharing practice and research activity within TSs, but other professional routes for dissemination, such as subject associations, also need to be acknowledged.
Towards Research Informed Practice
Over the past few decades âresearch evidenceâ has increasingly been used by policy-makers, nationally and locally, to encourage particular ways of working within education. The educational agenda, from the nature and construction of the curriculum through approaches to pedagogy to the training and deployment of professionals working in education, is justified and driven by âbest practiceâ as defined by local, national and international research. Systematic inquiry is designed to unveil the âbestâ ways of achieving desired outcomes. Research methodology (as opposed to the approach) focuses upon the identification of sources of evidence and how such evidence might be gathered and is explored in detail in Section 2 of this book, where issues of qualitative and quantitative evidence will also be addressed.
The literature on forms of education research is rich in terminology (jargon) which attempts to explain the perspective from which the research is performed (paradigms â the research model). In an attempt to obtain clarity and establish lines of demarcation, approaches which would otherwise be seen as complementary are treated almost as incompatible. Positivism, which takes an objective perspective of evidence, focusing on the measurement of outcomes in order to predict and identify patterns (Cohen et al., 2007), is made distinct from interpretive approaches, which concentrate on the interpretation of evidence and bringing meaning. On the whole, research evidence only becomes âusefulâ (to individual schools, departments or teachers) when findings are explained, interpreted and contextualised. At a âresearch-awareâ level, this interpretation may be overlaid by the political perspectives of the researcher and the way that they view society and social interaction (e.g. feminist and Marxist research). This âpolitical perspectiveâ often provides a guide as to how the researcher views and constructs âknowledgeâ and is referred to as the epistemology.
This book is firmly constructed to meet the needs of the educational professional who is employing research processes and skills as a basis for âimprovementâ, rather than for researchers working in the field of education. For this reason it is at this early stage three basic models of research activity will be presented and âvisualisedâ as a means of providing âanchorsâ by which you can make connections between the research activity you need to perform and the research processes which will be revealed and explored within this book.
The first is about taking a âsnapshotâ of reality. In practical terms this could be the act of constructing a case study of an individual child's (or teacher's or class's or school's) need...
