In the Research Conversations podcast series, researchers and teachers come together in conversation to collectively explore different aspects of engaging with literacy research. They draw on their diverse priorities, interests and concerns as they reflect on what their encounters with research are and reimagine what they could be.
You can listen to the episode or read the transcript below to consider their different perspectives when it comes to engaging with research.
“The reciprocal future of educational research”: Building new spaces for connections and collaborations
In this episode, teacher Ross Watson and researcher Debra Myhill explore the discrepancies between the various practices of researchers and the messages teachers receive about research.
Simplistic research guidelines overlook the complexities and differences within learning spaces that generalisations cannot account for. Teachers rarely have the time and space to critically reflect or share ideas about research amongst themselves. Moreover, the narrative of research having “the answers” ignores the ways in which teachers can raise questions and practice can inform research. The episode advocates for more collaborative spaces to develop and change relationships among teachers and researchers. By working together in communities, they can have conversations about different possibilities, limitations, nuances and contexts. Consequently, research will not be a product that is given to teachers, but rather a process that researchers and teachers engage in collaboratively.
Listen to the episode here
Debra Myhill (DM): Hi, I’m Debra Myhill. I was a secondary English teacher before I went to work at university. And I then spent a long time working at the University of Exeter training PGCE secondary English students and researching language and literacy, but particularly writing – that’s my real interest.
Ross Watson (RW): So I’m Ross – Ross Watson – and I’m a classroom-based practitioner. I’ve been in primary education for much longer than I care to admit. But I really enjoy being in the classroom. Being with the children and working with the children is one of my real pleasures. And I’ve been working with the primary English department at Sheffield Hallam University for a number of years.
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DM: People often associate me with grammar, but I’ve researched a lot about the grammar in relation to writing and it’s the writing that’s the real focus. I’ve just retired a couple of years ago. So I’m now a Professor Emerita, but I’m still doing some researching and writing.
RW: Alongside my classroom-based work, I’ve also been working as an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University for a number of years now. And I really value the opportunity to work alongside trainee teachers and pass on my sort of knowledge, passion hopefully, but also sort of expertise and ideas that I have.
And it’s really, really lovely to sort of be able to talk to you in this space and find some different perspectives – or similar perspectives that we might share – on the idea of educational research. Would you mind if I started by asking you a question Debbie?
DM: Yes, please do!
RW: Will do! [laughter] So first of all, I was wondering if researchers are sort of aware or hyper-aware of the different audiences that they might be producing research for? Or whether the act of research has its own inherent kind of goal?
DM: Hmm. It’s a good question because I would say that educational research may be different from some other areas of research such as – I’m thinking back to my own background in English literature – English literature research may be primarily for an academic audience. But I think in educational research, there is such a strong interest in how change or understanding about professional practice can be strengthened or developed that I think most educational researchers are aware of school or other learning contexts – it’s not always school. I think there are some differences though depending on the routes into research. So it’s interesting you were saying that you’re doing both at the moment; you’re doing a little bit of work at Sheffield Hallam on teacher education and you work in school.
RW: Mhmm, that’s right.
DM: I did my PhD while I was full-time teaching. So I did my research at – not at school – but [laughs] while I was still teaching. And I also did that same thing a lot for a long time; I was both teaching and working at the university. So for me personally, the thing that drives me to do educational research is to improve education, to make a difference really – that sense of making a difference to classroom practice, to our understanding of context and all of that. But I have also to be aware of the academic audience that I’m writing for, which is very different. So it’s like wearing different hats at different times.
RW: That’s really interesting that you say that. Do researchers have sort of an idea of how research enters into educational settings?
DM: Some do, some don’t. I think some people just get more involved with routes of research into educational settings, others kind of leave it hanging really: “I’ve published that research, let people find it.” But again, I think educational research may be slightly different because it’s often so controversial. You know, policies are controversial and the way research is used by policymakers is often controversial. So I think that sense of different routes into educational settings is one of the ways that lots of researchers try to get their research to teachers.
So it might be through teacher conferences, it might be through CPD [continuing professional development] work that you do with teachers, it might be through having a blog or a podcast on a website that you know teachers use. We’ve got a resources for teachers aspect of our research website which is massively used. I mean I just did it ’cause I thought I want people to be able to access it. And for me it’s always been about trying to get research to teachers through different routes. There’s no one way to do it.
The other way that we’ve done a lot of our research is teachers being involved with us on the projects; not just as people who you’re working with to do the research, but as co-researchers. So they’re working in teams with us. And that’s really good because obviously then they have a stake in the research process and they are then communicating that research to other people. I mean both the questions really don’t have a single answer. So in some ways you’ll get my perspective. But I do think educational research is slightly more attuned to – some educational research [laughs] – is slightly more attuned to educational settings and professional practice.
RW: Hmm. That’s really interesting. I’m finding sort of increasingly over the last number of years that educational research sometimes enters the educational setting as a very clean, very pure message or enlightening tool. And that often it comes attached with directions for practical things that should or must be done. It seems very clear, it seems very pure and that this is a learned and an understood truth that we should act upon. However, I suspect that the act of educational research is far from that. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about that.
DM: Yeah, it’s the idea that there is something which works which kind of underpins that way of working. And for me personally I think that that misunderstands the nature of educational research and the complexity of the classroom or the learning – I mean I keep saying classroom, but I have to remember that learning occurs in all sorts of settings. If there’s a good study, a really robust study done that proves that X did Y in the classroom, it doesn’t mean that if all the country’s teachers start doing X, Y will happen. Because different things happen.
And one of the things about particularly the kind of large-scale research that tends to be valued in that kind of “what works” debate, that the ultimate aim from a research point of view is generalisation. The idea that the statistical measures you are using can say that, “in general this is true”. And that sounds quite good really. But the trouble is in a classroom of 30 children, you are not dealing with “in general”; you are dealing with “in particular”. And if something is generally true even say for 90% of the class, that still means there’s a child there for whom it’s not working. Equally it might mean that the kind of children you’ve got in your class are very different from a general population and it won’t work for half of the class.
So for me that’s a very fundamental problem that we have at the moment with research. I mean I often think about COVID and the COVID vaccine, you know. Obviously it was brought in as quickly as it could be because of the context, but the Oxford AstraZeneca one was 75% effective. And that 75% effective was seen as enough to make it worth us having it because for 75% people it would work. And there’s an analogy of that with the classroom except that for teachers, we’ve got to think about what we do with the 25%. [laughs] So I think that it’s a real problem, partly to do with statistics and generalisation.
I don’t think any study in education will ever have the answer. I think there needs to be a whole sequence of studies over time accumulating evidence before you can really be confident about whether something works or not. So metacognition is quite a good example of that. There’s quite a lot of research about metacognition done by different groups of researchers in different countries that does seem to show that metacognition is really important. And for me, that’s better evidence that this is something that teachers might think about and reflect on with their own classes than a single study that gives X as a result and says, “go forth and do likewise.” How does this feel from your perspective in the classroom?
RW: It’s really interesting that you mention the idea that there are a number of studies that build over time, and there is that time – that time to reflect. Within educational settings, within the classroom, within schools, it quite often feels that there is no time. There is no time for reflection amongst colleagues, within settings; there’s very little time for reflection or sharing of practice, sharing of thoughts and ideas between educational settings. It feels very much that there is often a drive to get from A to B; or to get from a perceived starting point to a goal that can be achieved or that can be measured. And that pressure comes both within the setting and it also comes externally as well, from sort of policy or from expectations at national level.
And so it’s frustrating to feel that there is this understanding of educational research as a living sort of organic almost growing field. And yet within educational settings, it often feels that we must try and find the quickest route between two points; a conduit that will arrive us – sometimes magically, [laughter] sometimes you know at the drop of a hat – to where we perceive we need to be. It would be really, really nice to have a space or to have a priority within education that allowed professionals both in and outside of the classroom to have that space and time to discuss, to reflect. You mentioned teachers being part of educational research projects – to embrace that as something that all staff within educational settings could get involved in. It just feels very sort of pressured at the moment.
DM: I mean some countries give teachers an entitlement to kind of sabbaticals or study leaves or time out or going abroad where they can do that kind of reading and reflection which I think would be good. What action would help you the most in that respect? I mean in terms of giving you the space that you want … you need.
RW: I think if you were to ask any professional within an educational setting, it’s time. Having time that was … not sacrosanct but that was set aside and valued to engage with educational research, to look at and access educational research, and to reflect upon you know what’s happening within individual settings, what individual settings might need, what their situations are. And to think, where could we look for advice? Where could we find inspiration? What could we try that might affect practice but in a meaningful way for us? So I think time is one aspect.
I think also that legitimacy of the value of research to the actual job of being in a school, the vocation of working with learners with multiple needs, multiple identities, multiple views of the world themselves.
Is there a sense that from the research side that there are pressures that perhaps inhibit research projects, that inhibit the access of research by sort of classroom-based practitioners?
DM: Yeah, I think so. I certainly know that when we’ve had teachers involved in our research projects, one of the things we’ve often had there is a real interest. No trouble at all getting people and teachers involved. And we’ve always been lucky enough – or nearly always been lucky enough – to get funding that allowed for paying for supply cover or time-out so that that time was – ’cause that’s one of the things that we’ve always felt, that time is really important. And actually even with that time, they’ve often still struggled to get the time kept sacrosanct because of the pressures of day-to-day life.
I think the other thing about that notion of reflection and engaging with research as educational professionals, it’s also about being aware of what it is that educational professionals bring to research. One of the things that troubles me is it’s so often positioned as a hierarchical relationship. “Here is the research, here’s the practice. You as the teacher are the person who has to implement this research into this practice.” And actually, of course, the teacher is fundamentally the most important person in that relationship.
But what it ignores is the way practice can inform research. It’s not a one-way thing and it’s often presented as “research has got the answers” and as you say you know “there’s the goal, go forth and do likewise.” But actually, like I was saying earlier about where things may not be working so well, often teachers can explain; “well, one of the reasons this doesn’t seem to be working is because for this group of children, we know that they need something else.”
And also I think the other thing is that teachers can often raise the questions that need to be answered. So I kind of think that if teachers had space, that reflection would allow them not just to read them research and think about how they would implement it, but also to reflect on the research and think of it critically. “But will this work for our children? [laughs] Or how might this work?” And having the confidence, I think, to adapt it too. I would love to see not only that space for teachers to engage but a complete removal of the hierarchy and seeing collaborative partnerships where people really work together with a shared goal.
RW: How do you think we could facilitate more spaces for research and for educational settings to sort of meet and develop those relationships and change those relationships, remove that hierarchical structure that may exist in some areas at the moment?
DM: Well, the motherhood and apple pie answer would be that that time and space for engaging with research would be part of teaching contracts; that it would be built into what it means to be a professional. I mean I think that’s probably as unlikely as anything to happen in the short term [laughs] but having it as a formal process. You know in lots of other professions, you have to show that you’re engaging with your professional development in certain ways and it could link to that.
Coming back to what might be more pragmatic ways of doing it, I do think things like some of the research schools and the research school hubs and communities. I think trying to do things nationally is often harder than working together in communities where getting together physically face-to-face is more possible. I also think that there are ways to be much more ambitious about the funding that could be secured that would buy some of that teacher time. There are funding bodies who are very keen to fund teachers working on projects and I think that should be just used a lot more. So I don’t have an easy answer. But I do think probably local community working is probably the most realistic way going forward.
RW: The idea of that difference between community and sort of national level viewpoints on educational research cause me to think of something else and that is that you must be aware as I am that often pockets of research are used quite directly at national level to either put forward certain agendas or to convince that certain viewpoints are the true viewpoints that should be followed. And I wonder how researchers feel if perhaps a piece of research or body of research that they may have been involved in is then used by another organisation for perhaps a very different purpose. And I just wonder how that feels as a researcher or as a group of researchers and what researchers are able to do about that – if they are able to do anything about that – once it’s out there in the world as it were?
DM: I think one thing about being a researcher is to an extent that once you let it get out there into the world, you almost have to accept that things might happen to it that you don’t want to happen to it. You lose control and trying to gain control by not letting it out would be counterproductive. But I think lots and lots of researchers have had the experience of their research being used by government or Ofsted in ways that they have objected to. And they do go back to the government and Ofsted and complain. So you get a lot of behind-the-scenes complaints about it. But at the end of the day, the real problem is whoever’s reading the research has the right to make of it whatever they will. [laughs]
I mean on one level I would take a kind of calm attitude and say, “it’s out there. I can’t do anything about it.” But I have complained on at least two occasions when I felt that what was being done with my research was dishonest rather than it being used in a way that I didn’t approve of – which is slightly different; but when I felt that I was being used to endorse something, that was not what the research was endorsing. But of course, you never really get anywhere with that. That’s perhaps just salving my own sense of conscience about it. [laughter]
But I think the only answer to that is we have constant communication with the people who do matter. So I do lots of CPD and that’s been the point at which I’ve been able to have the best discussions with teachers about the research. I often try and highlight some of the limitations in the studies that we’ve done so that nobody takes that line, “oh, this is wonderful!” [laughs] It’s really, “oh look, there interesting things here that I might want to use.” ’Cause no research is just wonderful as the way it is. But I think that basic thing of the way research is used by powerful people to leverage what they want is really hard. And it’s particularly strong here. It doesn’t happen in all countries. It happens in quite a few, but … [laughs]
RW: There is a real sense of that I feel when you see research within educational settings. I don’t know if I’m just talking about primary as opposed to secondary, I don’t know if it feels differently in secondary settings. But it does feel that research is often used as the way to get something done.
DM: Yeah. It’s a form of coercion in a way. It coerces particular behaviours and I think that is really difficult. Governments say openly – I think it might even be in the Ofsted review of English, did say at the beginning that “we are looking for research that supports the strategies we’re implementing.” I mean it’s quite hidden, but they were open about the fact that that was what they were doing. But that says something about what research is for, doesn’t it? [laughs] What research is for in that sense is, “I’ve got a good idea. I want to implement this policy. We’ve been elected on this policy, we’ve got a mandate for this. Let’s find the research which evidences it.” Rather than the contrary. And I think that is a real problem for us. [laughs]
Reflecting back on what we’ve said here, in terms of you and your schools and you know your own practice and how you use research, what for you is the most negative thing about engaging with research and what’s the most positive thing about engaging with research?
RW: Ooft oh gosh. Certainly for me personally, one of the most negative experiences of engaging with research is when it isn’t engaged with; when it’s done for you, done at you. And there’s very little reflection.
And the converse of that is you know, when you’re given that opportunity to reflect. And it actually means something to you, your setting, your own viewpoints and your own standpoint in where you are on your journey in an educational setting. When you’re able to reflect, to ask further questions, to look at yourself in the mirror and kind of think, “well actually, maybe I could try something different. Maybe there is an opportunity.”
And I think it’s that idea of opportunity, that we can learn more, that we can make new connections. And you mentioned earlier that this idea of new spaces for these connections. I think that fills me with optimism and I can actually feel the smile appearing back on my face now. But what we need to be doing is looking for those spaces, the spaces that don’t currently exist. Or are sort of hidden in the shade somewhat a little bit. And I think there’s real power in that. I think there’s real potential. And I think it would mean an awful lot more – to certainly the people within the educational settings – knowing that these new spaces existed, were valued and could be, you know, built upon and developed.
DM: So what we’re looking, going forward, is really not thinking about research as a product that is bought and given to you, but research as a process.
RW: Absolutely.
DM: That we all engage in collaboratively – researchers, teachers.
RW: Yeah.
DM: And we have those spaces that allow for that thinking about the process, questioning and reflection. And that I think would be positive going forward!
RW: Yeah, absolutely. The reciprocal future of educational research.
DM: Yes! Indeed. And it’s perfectly possible!
RW: Absolutely!
DM: It’s been brilliant chatting with you, Ross. It’s a shame that we’ve got so little time because it’s such an important topic.
RW: Absolutely.
DM: And I think this idea of how do we bring teachers and researchers together … that is definitely the way forward.
RW: I agree. I’ve really enjoyed it too. It’s been lovely to hear your viewpoints, hear your thoughts and to have a space, our own little space –
DM: Yes!
RW: Where we’ve been able to share that. Really valuable. Thank you.
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