How do you know what works, works for you? An investigation into the attitudes of senior leaders to using research evidence to inform teaching and learning in schools

Graves, Susan; Moore, Alexis

doi:10.1080/13632434.2017.1366438

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…School leaders appear content to plan school improvement without referring to robust evidence (Graves & Moore, 2018). Some are already explicitly stating that they will ignore evidence in their schools, with a backlash against evidence‐informed approaches, the use of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and the feeling of being told what to do in what they see as their own domains (Cain, 2019).…”

Section: The Possible Barriers To Evidence‐usementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

Gorard

See

Siddiqui

2020

Review of Education

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For decades there have been calls by concerned stakeholders to improve the quality of education research, and some progress has been made towards creating a more secure evidence base in some areas. More programmes and approaches that have a reasonable evidence base are now also being used in schools (but not in policy, and not necessarily because they have a reasonable evidence base). However, there has been no equivalent improvement in secure knowledge about how best to get that evidence into use, or even what difference it makes when such evidence is used. This paper looks at what little is already known about the different ways to get research evidence into use in education by summarising the results of a large-scale review of the literature. A total of 323 of the most relevant studies were looked at across all areas of public policy, and judged for quality and contribution. Very few (33) were of the appropriate design and quality needed to make robust causal claims about evidence-intouse, and even fewer of these concerned education. This means that despite over 20 years of modest improvement in research on what works in education policy and practice, the evidence on how best to deploy these findings is still very weak. We consider studies in terms of several issues, including whether they look at changes in user knowledge and behaviour, or student outcomes, and how evidence is best modified before use. Providing access to raw research evidence or even slightly simplified evidence is not generally an effective way of getting it used, even if that evidence is presented to users by knowledge-brokers, in short courses or similar. What is more likely to work for both policy and practice is the engineering of high quality evidence into a more usable format and presenting it actively or iteratively via a respected and trusted conduit, or through population measures such as legislation. Having the users actually do the research is another promising approach. Expecting each individual study they fund to have an impact is not the way forward, as this may encourage widespread use of ineffective or even harmful interventions. Publicly-funded users, including policy-makers, should be required to use evidence-led programmes from those libraries providing them and which are appropriate and relevant to their aims. Research funders should support these approaches, and help to build up libraries of successfully tested programmes. Researchers need to be scrupulous, looking at their new evidence in the context of what is already known and not looking to obtain 'impact' from single studies. More and better research is needed on the best routes for evidence-into-use. However, the improvements required of all parties are as much ethical in nature as they are technical or scientific.Keywords use of evidence, engineering of evidence, translation of evidence, research impact, knowledge transfer, robust evidence.

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Section: The Possible Barriers To Evidence‐usementioning

confidence: 99%

What is the evidence on the best way to get evidence into use in education?

Gorard

See

Siddiqui

2020

Review of Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although there is now a recognition that evidence use can and should be used to improve practice, there is only limited evidence on how this might be facilitated at the school level (Graves and Moore, 2017). What's more, a systemic gap appears to exist between research and practitioners which as yet shows little indication of narrowing (Coldwell et al, 2017;Graves and Moore, 2017;Whitty and Wisby, 2017). As a result, this leaves only sporadic instances of EIP occurring within and across schools with other factors, such as intuition and experience, instead solely driving much of the decision-making undertaken by teachers (Vanlommel et al, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

World-wide barriers and enablers to achieving evidence-informed practice in education: what can be learnt from Spain, England, the United States, and Germany?

Malin

Brown

Ion

et al. 2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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A global push exists to bolster the connections between research and practice in education. However, fostering evidence-informed practice (EIP) has proven challenging. Indeed, this ‘problem’ requires simultaneously attending to multiple aspects/levels of education systems, and to the contexts within which they reside. As such, comparative analyses using systems approaches hold potential for achieving context-specific insights regarding how to foster EIP. However, such analyses have been scarce, and what research does exist has generally been limited relative to methods and theory. Given this, the present study executes and describes/reflects upon a novel approach for analysing and comparing EIP in/across systems. In this study, educators’ evidence use patterns are described and comparatively analysed, using a sample of four regions within high-income national settings: Catalonia (Spain), England (UK), Massachusetts (USA), and Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany). This study employs a dual analytical frame (a cohesion/regulation matrix and institutional theory) to supply a methodological lens through which to understand EIP within and across these four systems. Together, this approach not only provides a way of accounting for the macro-level differences between contexts, it also enables a comparison of meso-level and micro-level factors (via institutional theory) that might be common and distinct across systems. This study’s findings reveal substantial diversity in the extent and nature of evidence use between systems, which in turn patterned according to distinctive cultural, systemic, and institutional features. Considering these findings, this study’s discussion advances some provisional insights and reflections regarding actual and potential EIP in education. For example, variability relative to the types/extents of accountability pressures, and how this affected educators’ data and evidence use, enabled a discussion holding relevance for policymakers. We also share process-related insights—i.e., describing the advances and challenges we experienced while undertaking this new approach. These points hold relevance for colleagues wishing to emulate and improve upon the efforts described herein, which we argue are applicable both in and beyond the education sector. Relative to education, these approaches can be applied and improved with an eye toward developing context-specific (vs. one-size-fits-all) packages for fostering EIP and, ultimately, achieving high quality and progressively improving schools/systems.

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“…Research informed teaching practice (RITP) represents a collaborative process in which teachers and school leaders work together to access, evaluate and apply the findings of academic research in order to improve teaching and learning in their schools (Walker, 2017). There is now a longstanding recognition by both teachers and policy-makers that academic educational research can be used to improve practice but only limited evidence on how this might be facilitated at the school level (Graves and Moore, 2017). Furthermore, a systemic level gap appears to exist between research and practitioners which as yet shows little indication of narrowing (Buske, and Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, 2018;Coldwell et al, 2017;Graves and Moore, 2017;Whitty and Wisby, 2017).…”

Section: Research-informed Teaching Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is now a longstanding recognition by both teachers and policy-makers that academic educational research can be used to improve practice but only limited evidence on how this might be facilitated at the school level (Graves and Moore, 2017). Furthermore, a systemic level gap appears to exist between research and practitioners which as yet shows little indication of narrowing (Buske, and Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, 2018;Coldwell et al, 2017;Graves and Moore, 2017;Whitty and Wisby, 2017). As a result this leaves only sporadic instances of RITP occurring within and across schools; with other factors such as intuition and experience instead solely driving much of the decision making undertaken by teachers (Buske, and Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, 2018;Vanlommel et al, 2017).…”

Section: Research-informed Teaching Practicementioning

confidence: 99%