January 2023<\/p>\n
Cathy Burnett\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n When we try to explain the focus for the Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education project, we often say that we are interested in \u2018how research moves to, from and among teachers\u2019.\u00a0 At this point in the project it is worth expanding on what we mean by this as we have found that this statement can be interpreted slightly differently from how we\u2019ve intended it.<\/p>\n First of all, when we refer to \u2018research\u2019 we adopt an inclusive definition. In other posts<\/a> I have made the point that we are interested in literacy research associated with a wide range of methodologies and topics. Here I want to emphasise that we are not just interested in research that originates in universities or other institutions but also in teacher-led research and enquiry and in research that is coproduced by academics and teachers[1]<\/a> .<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My second point is that, when we talk about research moving \u2018to, from and among\u2019 teachers we do not mean to imply that the recommendations from research can be parcelled up and distributed from researchers to teachers or handed from teacher to teacher simply to be acted upon. We don\u2019t want to suggest that teachers are passive recipients of research. We know from our own work on this project and from prior studies that teachers find it hard to make time to engage with research (whether this is academic research or research conducted by themselves or by other teachers) (See Coldwell et al., 2017) . When they do, however, research appears to be most useful when combined with professional knowledge and interpreted in the light of teachers\u2019 own contexts (Cain et al. 2016). This professional interpretation of research is hugely interesting \u2013 although it\u2019s not something we\u2019re looking at closely in our project.<\/p>\n We are however interested in how research findings gain traction (and within this, whether certain kinds of research findings gain more traction than others) \u2013 hence our focus on how research moves to, from and between teachers.<\/p>\n This focus on teachers<\/em> is important. Other work has provided useful ways of thinking about how research moves to schools or districts and subsequently to teachers and into classrooms (Maxwell et al., 2022). And there have been attempts to map the routes by which research can move from universities to policy and to schools (British Academy, 2018).<\/p>\n In our project we are certainly interested in the kinds of research that reaches teachers via their schools \u2013 and how this links to national policy, local and national initiatives and the work of different research brokers.<\/p>\n But we are also<\/em> interested in other ways in which teachers encounter research \u2013 e.g. through subject associations, Masters courses, on social media or through self-initiated internet searches driven by a particular interest or concern from their own classroom. These encounters are not always driven by national, local or school policy.\u00a0 If we are to understand which kinds of research are gaining traction we need not only to look at attempts to connect teachers with research led by policy, institutions or researchers. We need to explore teacher-led and teacher-to-teacher research encounters which research. These are driven by\u00a0 a wide variety of motivations and involve navigating a vast array of sources of information representing very different standpoints.\u00a0 We refer to these informal, serendipitous encounters with research as \u2018research encounters in the wild\u2019.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> The latter is far from common but there have been some promising recent developments which – such as launch of the United Kingdom Literacy Association Participatory Approaches to Literacy Research SIG<\/a> and a recent special issue on Connecting Research and Practice in the Journal of Research in Reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n British Academy (2018). Harnessing Educational Research. Available online at: HarnessingEducationalResearch_0.pdf (thebritishacademy.ac.uk)<\/a><\/p>\n Cain T. (2015). Teachers\u2019 engagement with research texts: Beyond instrumental, conceptual or strategic use. Journal of Education for Teaching, 41(5): 478\u2013492.<\/p>\n Coldwell M., Greaney T, Higgins S., Brown C., Maxwell B., Stiell B., Stoll L., Willis B., & Burns H. (2017). Evidence-informed teaching: an evaluation of progress in England: Research report. Department for Education. Retrieved March 7, 2022, from https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/625007\/Evide nce-informed_teaching_-_an_evaluation_of_progress_in_England.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Maxwell, B.,\u00a0Sharples, J., &\u00a0Coldwell, M.\u00a0(2022).\u00a0Developing a systems-based approach to research use in education.\u00a0Review of Education<\/em>,\u00a010, e3368.\u00a0https:\/\/doi-org.hallam.idm.oclc.org\/10.1002\/rev3.3368<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 2023 Cathy Burnett\u00a0 When we try to explain the focus for the Research Mobilities in Primary Literacy Education project, we often say that we are interested in \u2018how research moves to, from and among teachers\u2019.\u00a0 At this point in the project it is worth expanding on what we mean by this as we have … Continue reading Exploring the movements of research in the wild<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"0","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,30,25,26,9,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-project","category-literacy","category-primary-literacy","category-research","category-research-context","category-teachers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.shu.ac.uk\/rmple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}