Becoming a Research Engaged School Thursday 3 November 2005

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Becoming a Research Engaged SchoolThursday 3
November 2005
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Becoming a Research Engaged School

• Why should teachers and schools engage in enquiry
  and research
• The national project Investigating the Research
  Engaged School
• Thinking about your research investigation
• Thinking about whole-school engagement

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Making research make a difference in schools

• Why should teachers and schools engage in
  research?
• A laudable extra if you can spare the time?
• An indulgence that they can ill afford?
• Or
• A core feature of reflective practice and
  professional development
• Clear contribution to improving the quality of
  learning and teaching, and raising standards

School-based enquiry and research are now being
seen to make an important contribution to
self-evaluation, improvement, and the
professional learning of staff (Handscomb and
MacBeath, 2004)
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Empowering teaching and schools

• Data rich Information Poor!
• Seeking evidenced based answers to everyday but
  critical questions that teachers ask is becoming
  crucial to a schools survival, growth and
  success.
• Schools are required to become self-evaluating,
  open to scrutiny, evidence-based, data rich.
• But schools can also be information poor
  (MacBeath, Mortimer, 2001)
• limited ownership of data they are expected to
  use
• not perceived as necessary data that they value

In the research engaged school, teachers have
confidence in the process, and enjoy mutual
support in exploring their thinking, scrutinising
their practice and taking good ideas further.
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The Forum for Learning and Research Enquiry
(FLARE)

• Made up of practising teachers and headteachers
• Membership through a selection process
• Its remit includes
• developing an Essex Research and Development
  strategy
• promoting the involvement of teachers, and other
  school colleagues, in research and enquiry
  activity
• promoting research activity that has an impact on
  raising standards
• providing advice and guidance on the use and
  dissemination of research and the commissioning
  of research.

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The benefits of practitioner research school

• The image of research as being something done by
  others to teachers
• Often the best people to research their classroom
  are the teachers themselves! They are the experts
  on their classrooms and their children
• Many teachers are keen to reflect upon their
  work, explore different approaches, and try out
  new things in the classroom.
• Research activity provides the opportunity to
  support teacher enquiry and make it more
  systematic.

RESEARCH Systematic Enquiry made public
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A culture of enquiry

• Pupil and teacher learning
• research covers a wide range of activities and
  includes what teachers routinely expect of their
  primary and secondary pupils
• teachers encourage their pupils to engage in
  inquiry, systematically and with a concern for
  evidence
• the same principle applies to teachers themselves

Research is about turning intuitive and
spontaneous judgements into more systematic
investigation
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Practitioner research a credible contribution?

• Emerging evidence that teacher research
• Contributes to teacher learning
• Helps change teacher practice
• But still doubts that it-
• Significantly contributes to the body of research
  knowledge about learning and teaching. Furlong,
  Salisbury and Coombs, 2003
• There is no one definition of good research in
  the educational field, and fitness for purpose
  should be a key concept. Hillage Report, 1998.

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Ways in which schools / staff engage in research

• Using the research of others
• Doing research
• Being part of the research of others, NERF 2004
• All teachers should have an entitlement to
  research thinking in order to develop their role
  as critical users of research. All schools and
  colleagues should have an entitlement and perhaps
  a responsibility, to participate in a relevant
  research partnership for appropriate periods.
• Alan Dyson, NERF Sub group, 2001

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Features of the research engaged school

• Drawing evidence from
• Essex teachers currently engaged in research
• higher education research activity
• national initiatives
• Four broad dimensions
• The research engaged school has a research-rich
  pedagogy
• The research engaged school has a research
  orientation
• The research engaged school promotes research
  communities
• The research engaged school puts research at the
  heart of school policy and practice

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Investigating the research engaged school

• A two-year research and development project,
  started in autumn 2003
• To investigate the process and impact of research
  engagement
• Involving 15 schools in 5 English LEAs
• Partnership working between schools, NFER
  researchers and LEA staff
• Sponsored by NFER, LGA, NCSL, GTCE, the LEAs and
  schools themselves.

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What we need to know some pressing issues

• The problem of application of research
• Research and its application to policy and
  practice can be more fully described as a process
  of producing, disseminating and using new
  knowledge
• Knowledge Production
• Enabling
• Creation
• Validation
• Knowledge Dissemination
• Transmission
• Mediation
• Transfer
• Knowledge Use
• Application
• Modification
• Routinization
  Adapted from Hargreaves, NERF
  sub-group, 2001

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The research project and the school

• The project in the school . and the school in
  the project.
• What is the research problem?
• What is the research enquiry question?
• The research investigation
• Whole school engagement which supports the
  investigation

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Promoting Enquiry and Research
Consultancy programme for schools

• What do you want to find out? (the research
  problem and research questions)
• What information do we need?
• How will we obtain the information?
• How will we check that the information gathered
  is sound and the methods for gathering it
  effective?
• How will we make sense of, and use, the
  information?
• How do we draw secure conclusions?
• Making judgements about recommendations for
  changed practice.

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One schools approach

• Main question
• How do teacher questioning styles affect pupil
  learning?
• Sub questions
• How does teachers use of questioning motivate,
  engage and focus students?
• What do students think about teachers
  questioning styles?
• How can teachers get students to ask learning
  questions?

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Collecting evidence on questioning style

• Videoing teaching and reviewing the tapes
• Interviewing students
• Questionnaires for students and teachers
• Trialling different questioning strategies
• Regular meetings to discuss process and insights

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Research Engaged Schools Seminar

• Gathering initial information
• contextual search
• literature search

The discipline of keeping the research under
review

• Gathering research data

Check out and adjust research problem
Research design and methods
Raise and hone the research questions
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Update on school developmentThe relationship
between the project and the school

• Some messages from the national project
• Projects are based on what is previously known
  research problem and question are informed by
  some review of the literature
• Research topics address school priorities
• Whole school, not individual focus
• SMT provide support and leadership
• Resources are mobilised from and beyond the
  school
• Promotes a cycle of reflection and development
• Can contribute to a professional learning
  community

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School-wide engagement

• The relationship between the project and the
  school
• What difference is teacher engagement making to
  the school?
• A coterie of enthusiasts or universal and widely
  shared with extended participation?
• Stickability of the research activity or
  dependant on the hero-researcher.
• At the core of school improvement or a luxury
  ... and how would you know?

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Features of a research engaged school

• A culture of enquiry and research?
• Thinking is indistinguishable from talking, from
  striking sparks, from bantering, parrying and
  playing
• (Michael Ignatieffs description of Isaiah
  Berlin, Ignatieff, 1998)

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Teachers comparing notes