At Festable on the 2^nd June 2018, the UK’s first National Festival of Specialist Learning, Sarah Rhodes and I ran two journal club workshops and launched the concept of #ResearchSENDExchange within the context of our organisation, @ResearchSEND

What is ResearchSEND?

ResearchSEND was developed to promote the importance of research in meeting the needs of learners with SEND through events, collaborations, publications and research projects.

Over the last year it is possible that you have read about ResearchSEND in publications, for example nasen connect (September 2017, Issue 5) or attended a national ResearchSEND Conference (Sheffield Hallam University in November, Oxford Brookes in January, The University of Wolverhampton in June) or seen ResearchSEND represented within other conferences such as The Chartered College of Teaching – Third Space events, The National Festival of Education and NasenLive

We will now be appearing more regularly, as we are part of the Whole School SEND Workforce Consortium and we will be running a series of pieces within nasen connect to explore the role of research in meeting the needs of learners with SEND.

When we established ResearchSEND, we set it out as three strands , Researching the bigger picture which considers research undertaken across the educational landscape and considers research undertaken by large research organisations such as EEF, commissioned research projects and large scale work undertaken by Universities.

New researchers, New voices which encourages teachers undertaking their own personal research to have the space to share that work. This may be to support their CPD and may be part of a further study project, for example a Master’s Degree and ChangeMonday which examines how research can be translated into classroom practice to improve pupil outcomes.

What constitutes research?

Research, in essence, attempts to solve a problem, and within our ResearchSEND organisation we are seeking to use research to better meet the needs of children and young people with SEND.

As research can be about gathering new data from evidence based practice, undertaking reviews of existing research and synthesising information, at ReserachSEND we see this as a way to enhance our classroom practice, but recognise that busy class teachers do not always have time to consider if what they are using has a solid research background

We know research is often transferable and we can interpret research approaches and results to our own practice by modifying aspects to be more appropriate to our own setting, institution, or practice, and again we recognise this is not always possible to do within the busy working day (and certainly not when you get home in the evening!).

But it is advocated by our own professional Teacher Standards, ‘demonstrate a critical understanding of developments in the subject and curriculum areas and promote the value of scholarship’ (3B within Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge)

It is still the case, that as educators we consider research to be an activity undertaken after we have gained Qualified Teacher Status by academics or those engaging in professional or higher level study. Although, in our experience educators are continually reaching out to understand more about how they teach and support their learners in schools and their classrooms, especially around pupils requiring additional support. Consequently we are all actively trying to improve our practice, but we don’t always consider what we are doing as ‘research’.

Much of the activity undertaken to plan a lesson and meet the needs of the learners within the lesson is a form of research. We might need to revise our subject knowledge, or plan how to cover a certain learning objective. We may address this in various ways, including using search engines such as google or simply asking a colleague who may be a subject specialist or lead that area for the school.

A SENCO in a school is often considered the subject specialist on all things SEND, but this is an area where no one can be specialist; all pupils with SEND have differing needs and require a range of support strategies. All teachers will be aware of how to support the pupils in their class and where to go for additional support but knowing how to engage with research to improve pupil outcomes is also key.

If we would like to engage more in research around our classroom practice, especially SEND then we do on occasions have to actively consider the more traditional forms of research such as peer reviewed journals, which we often do not have time to read (or even find!).

But to combat this, maybe we should build research engagement into our continuous performance development (CPD) model and maybe we could do this via discussion groups and if we do than a journal (research) club might be a great start to this.

What is a Journal (research) club?

Martina Esis writing about medical journal clubs for the British Medical Journal in 2007, refers to an example she found of a journal club taking place above St Bartholomew’s hospital in the mid-1800s, as ‘a kind of club…where we could sit and read journals’ indicating that journal clubs are not new to the medical profession, but that they can be a way to keep professionals up to date.

The concept of a reading group is not new to us in education either, as many of us take part in one in one form or another. However we often take part to socialise and read fiction rather than educational pieces.

The reading group, to which I belong for example, is not made up of teachers, it is made of up of my friends (of which many are not teachers!). Our preference is historical fiction, we have been in existence for over ten years and we have covered a range of topics in our group, which without the fiction text as a backbone to the discussion may never have occurred.

Journal (research) clubs in Education do not have to be dissimilar to the reading group format we know from our own experience or the films and novels in which they feature. Journal (research) clubs like reading groups can be in any format, discussion over tea and cake or following a more formal pattern and engaging with an established reading group format. We have yet to have anything quite as popular as the reading club promoted by Richard & Judy within WHSmith, which produce books specifically for reading groups with questions for discussion published in the back of the book, but that, does not mean we cannot make a start.

If schools that are are willing to share examples of their journal club successes, do so, then we have the start of a good model to follow and by selecting and reading journals it could familiarise us all with the structure and language of research and can facilitate evidence informed discussions, around how we use research in our classrooms

ResearchSEND is not quite Richard and Judy (yet!) but there is no reason why schools cannot be supported to embrace a journal club and ResearchSEND to facilitate this development.

Starting a Journal (research) Club

For a journal club to be successful it should really be given space and integrated into existing staff CPD. This could be achieved in a number of ways, in a large secondary school for example it could take place within faculties to enhance subject specialism, whereas in a small primary school, all staff may read the same piece and discuss how it could contribute to change in practice.

To ensure success it is essential to select an appropriate research piece, and this could be the most challenging aspect of the club, not only selecting the piece but also where to access it from.

Selecting your research piece

Many of us access research daily, without realising it; What is the best iron when we are replacing one, what an actor has been in before when we are watching a film and following up something we may have read in the news.

We do this through a range of different sources, online (and paper) newspapers, twitter, Facebook, blogs. But these sources are not always the orginal source and searching for the original source material it can be a challenge, outside of an academic library (although not all academic libraries subscribe to all academic journals, so beware of this myth!)

What we often aren’t aware of when reading for pleasure and in our own time, is the original source material, and the piece we may be reading could be secondary source which may contain a bias, could be influenced by popular media or are we aware how the piece been interpreted from the original source.

Common examples of headlines which refer to original research often quote examples thus, ‘eating blue cheese can cure XXX’ but beware, only three people may have been cured of XXX out of the research group of 20 and this was a selected group of 20 young adults (between the age of 25 -26) with YYY.

Not all original research is behind firewalls, either, and there are local libraries (and academic libraries will issue visitor passes if asked) which can  give access to a range of databases such as ScienceDirect, Proquest, ERIC, PSychInfo, Pubmed, JSTOR (although to use then you have to sit in the library, they cannot be used remotely). Google Scholar is cited as an easy to use database, but often it gives access to abstracts only, and the original source will still need to be sort, and may be available elsewhere for a charge.

The Education Journal Club Website, lists ways of accessing original research, which limits searching and can stay within an area of interest. They mention shopping around, for example nasen gold membership gives access to all three of their journals, which could cost around £78 a subscription if buying separately. http://www.edujournalclub.com/access-to-research/ 

Or joining the Chartered College of Teachers which their website says gives access to 2,000 text journals, e-books, research and materials.

 

Now you have your article… Time to get started!

 

If you are running a research journal club in your school we would love to hear from you.

@ResearchSEND

#ResearchSENDExchange

 

References

Esisi, M (2007) Journal Clubs (accessed 10.06.2018) http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/Journal_clubs