In the Research Mobilities project, we spoke to primary school teachers in England about their varied encounters with literacy research. They shared how and why they look for research, the different kinds of ideas and formats they come across, how they share and engage with research, and the opportunities and challenges they face along the way.
These excerpts highlight a range of experiences and challenges with literacy research. You can use these quotes to get into conversation with teachers’ different viewpoints and prompt your own questions and reflections.
“I put […] one about the UKLA conference in City I that I went to which is a really nice way of sharing research and having it presented to you by the people that have done it and being able to ask them questions about it and so that’s quite nice. That’s just another way of sharing research, isn’t it, rather than just reading about it […]
I think the easiest way to share [research] is to hear about it and see it, so for me the Open University does the Reading for Pleasure conference. I went to the one in City L a few weeks ago and so what they’re presenting there is more – Whereas the UKLA is very academic, the OU things that they present for the Reading for Pleasure are much more ‘by teachers for teachers’, and so I came away with lots of practical things that I could do from research that other people had done, but I think that not a large amount of people go to it. People who are already interested. I don’t know how you would interest the people who aren’t interested or who don’t access that …”
“I lead probably eight staff meetings a year realistically and I always try to put some research in the staff meeting to say this is why we’re doing this, because I think when I’ve sat in meetings or in CPD I want to know where it’s come from and it’s not just someone’s whacky idea in the back bedroom on like a Tuesday night.
It varies to be honest, because sometimes it’s things that I’ve read or training that I’ve been on where there’s been a research influence. And when I book myself on CPD I am quite selective of what research backs it, so we’ve done bits with like Huntington Research School and things like that, so probably, I don’t know, a couple of hours a term. It depends completely because sometimes it’s a lot and I will really sit and digest a report and that might be a day, so I can really get my head in to it […] And sometimes it might be like 20 minutes before I plan a staff meeting where I read something and I take the key parts out and do almost like a summary for staff and I always share like EEF with the team, so they can see, you know where with EEF you’ve got your report and then you’ve got your executive summary sheet, I will often share that with people because I think it’s more digestible.”
“I have heard about it in other err MATs and another big trusts where they’ve actually set up Padlets and different things like that for people to just join and to be able to find that research and I thought to myself ‘Oh that’s so fascinating’ but then I thought nobody I know – I mean, for example: I did the Reading for Pleasure course with the Open University last year or the year before or something, and then again you get lots of really interesting things, but even when I put those things together and send them to people they don’t always have time to look at it. It doesn’t get looked at. So then you sort of think there’s no point.
For me, I would really like someone to have to be able to share that with so I am quite looking forward to – I know you’re not supposed to look forward to being part of a MAT but I am quite looking forward to the fact that you know there will be a kind of a whole group of people thinking about stuff like that, that I can maybe share with – because at the moment I can’t digest it and so I don’t.
“Almost like a community of experts. I know, going on CPD, taking on geography, I am not geography based at all, it’s not a subject I would say I’m any good at personally […] I would work really hard to make sure I have at least enough information to be able to put it across to the children and do well at doing that. But I am not a specialist, so having access to specialists, to people who go ‘this is my specialism, I know that this works, this works and this works for me.’ And there are options for others and having those and knowing that actually when I go here, they are specialists and I am certain that they have tried it, they have looked into it, and they have almost done all of the work that I don’t want to do in many ways.”
“Well I think initially something that anyone who is interested can access like a web resource or something, that people could access if they wanted to and we could share details of that quite easily. I don’t know, I’m trying to think of – I guess like a blog or something where people write really short, shortish, like 500 words or so entries about a piece of research that they’ve encountered and maybe the university could put in quite a lot, but maybe other people could submit things, you know, their own blog posts on things that they’ve read, so it could be collaborative. And that might provide some interaction and if people were interested, and there was buy in, then you could arrange a Zoom meeting to discuss something or develop something, or offer some training perhaps actually. Like people really go for that if they can add it to their CPD journal. So yes, something that doesn’t require the buy in from a certain number of teachers in the school for one individual to find it effective. And something that is quite easy to read piecemeal.
Like if you’re a newbie to research or you’re just thinking ‘Oh, is this something for me?’ then having something that is fairly digestible and short is definitely a good way in, rather than being faced with a 27-page piece of research using words that they might not have heard since they were at university themselves.”
