Colleagues,
One thing we've been discussing in the Teaching & Learning team is how we make better use of research evidence without creating another layer of professional reading for staff.
There is certainly no shortage of material available, but I'm not convinced that simply sharing more research papers or summaries necessarily changes classroom practice.
A few approaches we've been considering:
- Short evidence summaries linked to a specific classroom problem
- Using CPD time to examine one research finding and consider its practical implications
- Sharing examples of what an evidence-informed approach looks like in an actual lesson
- Being more explicit about the strength and limitations of the evidence
- Revisiting ideas after a term rather than treating research as a one-off CPD activity
I'm particularly interested in whether colleagues have found ways of making research feel relevant to teachers who don't necessarily have the time or inclination to read lengthy papers.
What has worked in your schools?
Sarah
We've had some success with starting from the classroom problem rather than the research.
For example, instead of giving staff something on vocabulary acquisition and asking them to read it, we've started with the question: "Why are pupils still using the same limited vocabulary in extended writing?"
That seems to get much more engagement because staff can immediately connect it to something they're seeing.
We then introduce the relevant evidence afterwards.
I agree with Emily.
We've also found that staff are much more interested when there's a fairly immediate opportunity to try something.
One of our recent CPD sessions looked at retrieval practice. Rather than spending most of the session explaining the research, departments each adapted one of their existing starters.
That made the discussion much more practical.
The difficult bit is the follow-up. We've done plenty of good CPD that disappears once everyone gets back to normal lessons.
I'd add a slight note of caution around the phrase "evidence-informed".
Some approaches have good evidence behind them generally, but that doesn't automatically mean they'll work in exactly the same way for every learner.
I'd like to see more discussion of when an approach might need adapting, particularly for pupils with SEND, rather than presenting research findings as universal instructions.
We've started building a very small "try / review / keep or drop" element into some of our CPD.
Teachers choose one change to trial for a few weeks and then discuss whether they actually noticed a difference.
It has been useful because there's permission to decide that something wasn't particularly helpful.
I think that makes the whole process feel more like professional enquiry and less like being given another initiative to implement.