USING RESEARCH

Teachers' Standards

This chapter addresses the following Teachers' Standards:

Teachers' Standard 8: Fulfil wider professional responsibilities

Teachers must:

• take responsibility for improving teaching through appropriate professional development, responding to advice and feedback from colleagues.

In relation to this standard the term 'professional development' is interpreted broadly and includes teacher engagement with research and scholarship as well as access to courses, training, coaching and mentoring.

PROFESSIONAL LINKS

The Carter Review of Initial Teacher Training made the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1c: Evidence-based teaching should be part of a framework for ITT content.

Recommendation 6: The Teachers' Standards should be amended to be more explicit about the importance of teachers taking an evidence-based approach.

Recommendation 7: A central portal of synthesised executive summaries, providing practical advice on research findings about effective teaching in different subjects and phases, should be developed. A future College of Teaching would be well placed to develop this.

Recommendation 8: ITT partnerships should make more systematic use of wider expertise outside university departments of education. There are many universities that are home to world-leading research and assessment organisations.

(Carter, 2015, pp 8–9)

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

What is this chapter about?

In this chapter you will learn about:

1. the importance of evidence-based teaching – what works and how do we know?

2. some of the key research that underpins aspects of teaching.

Why is it important?

Effective teaching is underpinned by research findings. Research helps us to understand the effectiveness of different teaching strategies, interventions and ways of working in the classroom. As a teacher it is important that the practices you implement in your classroom are evidence-based and informed by research. As a reflective teacher you have a responsibility to evaluate research and challenge it before applying it in the classroom. Research helps to demonstrate that teaching strategies have an impact and will make a difference to children's learning. Without research it is difficult to establish the effectiveness of particular teaching strategies and you could waste a lot of time implementing strategies which make little or no difference to children's learning.

The Carter Review stated that:

We believe it is critical that ITT should teach trainees why engaging with research is important and build an expectation and enthusiasm for teaching as an evidence-based profession. International evidence, including the RSA-BERA inquiry (British Educational Research Association (BERA), 2014), shows us that high-performing systems induct their teachers in the use, assessment and application of research findings.

(Carter, 2015, XVI, p 8)

Additionally,

Our findings suggest that sometimes ITT focuses on trainees conducting their own research, without necessarily teaching trainees the core skills of how to access, interpret and use research to inform classroom practice. It is important that trainees understand how to interpret educational theory and research in a critical way, so they are able to deal with contested issues.

(Carter, 2015, XVII, p 8)

Research findings can help to shape your educational values because they will help to inform your core beliefs about learning and teaching. During your ITT programme you will be introduced to seminal research findings on aspects of pedagogy such as assessment, feedback and early reading. Seminal research is research which has made a significant and often longstanding contribution to knowledge. It often informs current practice and is cited in books, journals and during teacher professional development sessions. However, as well as knowing seminal research it is also important that you keep up-to-date with the latest research findings on aspects of educational pedagogy. This will give you the confidence and knowledge to express your views to colleagues and to experiment with new approaches to teaching. Keeping up-to-date with current research findings will enable you to be a reflective teacher and it will keep you interested in teaching!

In this chapter, some key teaching methods and approaches are examined in relation to the current research to help you position your own teaching around the latest evidence. This chapter will also explore how you might access research and research summaries in order to keep up-to-date in your professional practice.

How to locate research

The starting point for you to access research is your ITT provider library. This may be a physical library which includes educational resources such as books and academic and professional journals. Your provider is also required to provide you with access to an electronic library. This will enable you to access online journals and electronic books as well as other resources such as newspaper articles. You will need to learn how to search electronic databases to help you locate research, and many providers now include this as part of the ITT induction process. You will need to learn which search words might yield the best results and then you will need to narrow the search by selecting various filters. General searches often produce several thousand sources so it is important to be as specific as you can when searching for material so that you can select sources from a narrower range.

In addition to your electronic library, many sources are now freely available on the internet for you to access.

Subject associations and charities or interest groups may provide access to useful research via their individual websites. Google Scholar is also a useful search engine for finding research. It is important to bear in mind that just because something has been published, that alone does not ensure it is quality material. You should be sceptical about material that you access on the web, particularly if it has not been through a process of peer review. Peer review is a process which assures the quality of the research, which usually goes through a process of revision before it is published. When searching through your provider's online library you are well-advised to select the 'peer review' option which filters out any material which has not been subject to this.

As time is precious on any ITT programme you will not be able to read everything and you will not be expected to do so. To save time, many reports (particularly government reports) include an 'executive summary' of the publication at the front and it is usually sufficient to read this. Try to access the summaries of research...