Lesley Saunders

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Towards an understanding of research evidence
or pedagogy?

• Lesley Saunders
• Policy Adviser for Research
• General Teaching Council for England
• Applied Practice-Based Educational Research
• Quality, Application Impact
• Institute of Education Conference
• 17 November 2006

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A starting point?

• It takes an extraordinary concatenation of
  circumstances for research to influence policy
  directly. rather research helps people
  reconsider issues, it helps them think
  differently, it helps them re-conceptualise what
  the problem is and how prevalent it is, it helps
  them discard some old assumptions, it punctures
  old myths  (Weiss)
• A single research study will not lead to dramatic
  change in what teachers do, nor should it do so.
  What research can, and must, do is add to
  teachers understanding and skills and, in that
  way, lead to better teaching (Hegarty)

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My themes this morning

• Symbolic role of research?
• A discourse of evidence?
• A discourse of pedagogy?
• What else might be important?

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Evidence?

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Pedagogy?
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Or something completely different?

• research basic human right
• the capacity to make disciplined inquiries into
  those things we need to know but do not know yet
  (Appadurai)
• emancipatory research ? research as emancipation
  (Lingard)

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Wikis
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Googles
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Wikis, commons, search engines virtual research?

• Creative freedom or free-for-all or take-over?
• Warrants for knowledge created?
• Role of professional/academic researchers?
• ?
• ?
• ?

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• lesley.saunders_at_gtce.org.uk