The Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education project investigated how research about literacy moves to, among and around primary teachers in England.
This project highlighted that:
- Teachers can feel empowered or restricted by research – sometimes encounters with research open out professional thinking and dialogue and sometimes they close it down through generating scripts for teacher to follow
- Research shapes teachers’ lives when it informs national/school/trust policy or underpins resources, schemes or training
- Teachers’ direct engagement with research is limited due to various factors that include time and school/national/trust policy
- There is an overwhelming array of resources available online which are badged as ‘research’, ‘research informed’ or ‘evidence-based’
- Research findings often appear in abbreviated forms – e.g. an infograph or bullet points – or are synthesised into a research review synthesis or guidance report. This means it can be difficult to identify the source of research or to understand how that research was carried out
- Judgements about credibility and relevance are not straightforward
- Some types of research and some research topics are mobilised more than others
- Various people, organisations and technologies play a role in mobilising research, e.g. policy makers, consultants, algorithms – all of these are shaped by particular beliefs and understandings
- Encounters with research involve what people feel as well as what they think
You can find summaries in:
Engaging with Research: Briefing for Teachers
Making connections between research and practice: Briefing for School/Trust Leaders
Engaging with research to inform policy and practice in literacy education: A discussion paper
Research Mobilities book:
You can find out how we arrived at these conclusions in our open access book Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education: How Teachers Encounter Research in An Age of Evidence-Based Teaching [due to be published in 2024/2025]