It is now just over two weeks since the launch of #ResearchSEND, and four weeks since I finally recognised that I was quite ill and needed to be signed off work. I am returning to work tomorrow (Monday) and will be picking up all the work I have not been able to do. But before I do that I want to share what I would probably have said if I had been well and introduced #ResearchSEND, with my colleague Professor Michelle Lowe.
(I have added some information, though that I have come across since #ResearchSEND, which I would use if I was introducing the event tomorrow)
Whilst putting together #ResearchSEND, I have come across lots of different views on teacher research, for example, who should be doing it, who shouldn’t be doing it, teachers aren’t researchers, teachers haven’t got time to research, and what teachers do is inquire, not research.
During this time I also spoke to a group of teachers who said they would not know where to start if they were asked to undertake research, nor would they know how to access or read current research. They thought that research was about testing something, usually an intervention, and as most of the research we are likely to come across if we don’t go looking for it, is research findings from groups such as the EEF, this is possibly a reasonable view to hold.
We do, though, have traditions of research within education, and we like qualitative approaches such as action research, observation case study and what we call small scale inquiry. Whereas the sciences favour the quantitative approaches which test and measure things. As many teachers are not reading full journal articles but reading summaries on social media or in Educational Publications, which are not peer reviewed journals, they often are not aware of how the study was conducted, who with and how the results were measured. When research is published in summary form and not in its original format, it can tend to be result focused, or as we know from Rob Webster’s experience reported incorrectly. If we rely on this kind of reporting to inform us about research, we could be making quite significant errors of judgment ( ask Rob about North Carolina)
My blog ‘Teachers as Researchers’ was written in response to and to support teachers like these to run small-scale research projects in their schools, and based on some work I led with the Entrust SEN & Inclusion Service and James Mannion from Praxis. The blog is not comprehensive, and is a starting point, although the guidelines are based on lessons we learnt though running a research project with sixty specialist consultants, many who have post-graduate qualifications and who had a wide range of experience in SEND. We found however that everyone had different views on research and what it meant to them, and this shaped how they undertook their research project. Unsurprisingly there was a significant amount of ‘testing’ undertaken. The ‘Teachers as Researchers’ blog was used by Alison Johnson from Entrust to structure a parallel session on my behalf at #ResearchSEND, around a whole School/Organisation’s approach to research.
Whenever ‘Teachers as Researchers’ is mentioned on social media, there are comments about teachers’ workloads and statements which indicate how time poor we all are and that it is not a priority. However comments have centred around what we currently consider our priorities to be, which seems to be mostly marking. Of course teachers are also planning, but less is said about the demands of this activity. Subsequently when we have all finished the marking we are required to do, there is no time for us to read the TES or Schoolsweek and certainly no time to consider any research related to what we do.
This was reinforced this week, when Mr Pink @Postivteacha found that there is little to no expectation that we read anything to do with our profession, which he outlines in a blog entitled ‘Teachers : We should read more’ ( allearssite.wordpress.com ). In a twitter poll he found that 47% of the respondents (224 teachers) thought it was unreasonable for school leaders to read educational research/books outside of school hours. We know it is very unlikely that teachers have time in the school day, as they are teaching(! ) the conclusion is that if this was scaled up, we could potentially have nearly half of the profession, not reading anything about their chosen subject or age range.
In other professions, reading the latest research is an expectation, and we expect it of our doctors and dentists, as we would expect to be treated using the latest medical research. I am testament to this, as it is the latest medical research which has helped me overcome my recent illness. Just over fifty years ago, women with my illness, would not have been treated, as there was no cure. I am currently taking some medication which has been trailed in the USA and recently been introduced in the UK. If my Consultant had not read the British Medical Journal, or any other peer reviewed journal she uses to keep her medical knowledge up to date, she may not have known about the new treatment and I would likely still be ill.
Some organisations within education have attempted to create a ‘reading research’ culture, where it is expected of teachers who hold specialist dyslexia qualifications and wish to be considered for professional accreditation. For example to become an Associate member of the British Dyslexia Association (AMBDA) Specialist teachers must demonstrate their professional development in order to gain the Status and maintain it. Professional development is recognised by way of not only attending training sessions, but also reading and responding to the latest research on specific learning difficulties. If this is not completed and evidence every three years, then a Specialist teacher may be unable to keep their membership (although Specialist Teachers do have to pay to be assessed). However this specialist CPD route is only open to teachers who have become Specialist through a range of dyslexia focused diplomas and is closed to all others.
There are organisations, however, working to create a culture of researchers and make us more research literate, such as ResearchED and more recently The Chartered College of Teaching which aims to create a knowledge based community to share excellent practice and to enable teachers to connect with rigorous research and evidence. There seems to be an acceptance that we do not have an active culture of research in Education, and maybe we don’t but our professional careers did not start off this way.
All of us have undertaken an ITT course to be able to enter the profession, and within these courses we have considered some forms of research, especially those who have joined the profession recently, as the current Initial Teacher Training Criteria and Supporting advice (Information for accredited Initial Teacher Training Providers, February 2017) state on page 17,’Training may be delivered in schools or other settings, and is likely to include a combination of unobserved and observed teaching, taught sessions, seminars, workshops, tasks and assignments, and engagement with academic/professional research. The content of professional programmes might include, for example:
- The role of the teacher
- Planning and assessment to ensure pupil progress
- National assessments and examinations
- Child development and learning
- Priorities, such as managing pupils’ behaviour, early reading, and special educational needs and disability
- Assessing and evaluating teaching
- The use of evidence and research to inform teaching.’
Research therefore has sat firmly within academic institutions and we have all undertaken it, but there seems to be no legacy left by this input as when teachers move to QTS and beyond they forget or don’t have time to consider research and search out peer reviewed journal articles to read in their leisure time. Research becomes something that someone else does.
However every teacher is a teacher of SEND, so we are undertaking research every day. We are always looking for what works towards supporting a child/young person (cyp) with SEND and whilst we are working out what works for a cyp with SEND, our work resembles a piece of research.
As research takes many forms, so does a pupil with SEND. Adopting a research approach to a cyp’s need would develop responsive teaching and the ability to adapt teaching methods. There are many teaching approaches and interventions which could be used under the umbrella of research, which support teachers to ‘use their best endeavours to make sure that a child with SEND gets the support they need – this means doing everything they can to meet children and young people’s SEND (6.2 SEND Code of Practice 2014)
Replicating research which has worked on groups of pupils with SEND, may be an effective way to support pupils, however it is difficult to deliver something which may have been very tightly controlled. For pupils with SEND, the following process could inform practice
- Examine effective interventions and reasonable adjustments in the classroom, through observation, and through discussion with cyp
- Reflect on why some things work and others don’t
- Focus on the things that work
- Research to see if there is more guidance and information available on the things that work
- Integrate new findings into practice
- Reflect regularly if the strategies and interventions used are contributing to success and the reasons why
With cyp with SEND, there may be little success at first, as each cyp is different, but if for example this process was used for a cyp experiencing literacy difficulties, who was not making the same progress as the rest of the class, the investigation which would take place to why. If mapped onto the above model, this could for example, involve undertaking diagnostic assessments, talking to parents/carers and undertaking an observation, all techniques recognisable as research approaches. Often the approaches used for pupils experiencing literacy difficulties, are based on interventions which require dynamic assessment; continuous assessment and evaluation to plan next steps, which is not a dissimilar approach to ones used by researchers such as EEF when researching the effective use of interventions with pupils in larger pieces of research.
We have launched @ResearchSEND to make a space and to recognise the importance of research in meeting the needs of cyp with SEND. There is research out of there to help us to do this, but is not widely used, we want to change that as we believe that every day counts, and we as practitioners should have a repertoire of skills, strategies and interventions at our finger tips to support all learners in our classrooms. We know as my friend and colleague, David Bartram, says the expertise is in the system and we need to share it out to benefit all our learners, and if we get it right for our Learners with SEND we usually get it right for all cyp.
From our initial start from the Institute of Education (IoE) within The University of Wolverhampton, we anticipate we will grow and will be working with a range of organisations to make this a reality, such as The Chartered College, Nasen, Whole School SEND to name but a few.
Thank you for joining us in creating a new vehicle to improve the outcomes of cyp with SEND. Look out for our blogs, publications and future events.
Follow us on Twitter @ResearchSEND
michhayw 
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