On teachers as learners
How to become more research-engaged
The ubiquitous ‘lifelong learner’ handle has become a bit trite. What does it really mean to be a lifelong learner? I would argue that it almost certainly means cracking open a book occasionally, probably involves subscribing to a few professional blogs, and ideally means belonging to a few professional networks. The world of research is vast and whole books have been written about research literacy. I loved this one. Is it realistic for teachers to engage directly with research when there’s no ‘tired’ like ‘teacher-tired’?
I have my own views on this, that others may understandably not share. My kids are older, I’m doing a Masters, and I look for a blank spot in my calendar where I can wedge in more short courses. I don’t think I’m particularly normal, but I also know that my teaching degree didn’t prepare me for the specialist skills I needed to teach effectively. So it’s an unfortunate legacy for many of us that we need to engage in retraining to deal with the complexities of our roles. For this reason, I would argue that teachers are obliged to engage with research, either through first, second or third-hand sources.
But there is someone who has a far more measured and pragmatic take on teachers and research than I do. Steven Kolber is incredibly well placed to talk about the power of social media and participation in enabling a more democratic profession - he’s even written a book about it! After months of procrastinating, I have finally joined his EduReading group, where papers are shared every month, teachers engage in video discussion asynchronously, and then have a third dip in a live Twitter chat at the end of the month. It’s been enlightening and not-at-all onerous. He gave some great insights into the kinds of people who engage, the barriers we all face, and how to ‘socialise’ research engagement.
I started with the big question: do all educators need to engage with research? Here’s what Steven had to say:
In an ideal world, I think it would be for everyone. In reality, probably not. In an ideal world, teachers would have enough time to actually do the thinking work as grassroots intellectuals. That's kind of the goal, right? You'd want to be actually doing the thinking labor, not just doing the teaching job.
That's something we can work towards. I think it’s about having the trust and the professionalism and the space to actually do the thinking work. Ideally, your school system would actually support that kind of thing and you'd be given time because I'm sure, in your work, it's more like, ‘Here's some extra reading’ —basically it’s just seen as additional work. But I still think it's possible. Obviously, it's something I actively do, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's good just because I do it.
I think for some people, the elevator goes all the way up to that floor. In my experience, they're sort of the people that are kind of fully committed, they're fully in it. But there are not that many people that want to clock off after a hard day of teaching and do that kind of reading and research. It's very useful for teachers to kind of zoom out from, ‘That was a hard day, those kids were annoying,’ or whatever it was, and actually look at how can we change things. How can we look at things in a different way?
But what about research literacy? Before talking to Steven, I had forgotten the rivers of research I had to wade through as an undergrad. I managed! He says that we are all capable:
We all passed enough university to become teachers, so every teacher has some capability, even if it's 40, 50, 60 years ago for some people. All teachers know how to do it at some level. So it's in there. But it's definitely one of those things that people think is too obtuse or too complicated. I feel like in a secondary school setting, it should be in theory easier, because we kind of strive to be experts in our field. You would think that at least you'd be able to pick up research around your content area or your subject area. That doesn't always seem to be the case.
I asked Steven whether he aims for a spread of ideologies or approaches in his paper selection for the group:
I try to. I don't really view research as sort of a binary of one or the other. Our first paper was Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction. So that traditionally would be considered a traditional research text. If you look back to our first three or four papers, they were all very kind of traditional. I mean, that's the value of the group. It's not like me saying, ‘Here's the best research!’ It's more like, ‘Here's an interesting topic that teachers should maybe consider thinking about.’ And that is very much led by the group.
Steven observed that teacher critical literacy has evolved from this kind of pluralistic approach. Members bring an open mind and a fresh perspective to every paper. He says:
I think we did two back-to-back around inquiry. The group is kind of an ever-changing beast. At the time, the feedback on that article was like, ‘Yeah... but it depends, really.’ We're not going to, as teachers, rule out half of our toolkit. So it's just not really an issue. I thought it was really exciting because it's not that common in research. So you get a really clear back-and-forth discussion. Then after we did two or three papers on it, the group was just like, ‘Yeah, what else is next?’ And so then we moved on to something else. It's kind of been like that ever since.
If there was any consensus in the group, it would be that John Hattie's methodology is maybe a bit problematic. It's hard not to notice, after reading as much research as people in the group have, that the transferability, the replicability of the studies reveal massive holes. And so obviously, Hattie's work aims to smooth out a lot of those complications to say, ‘Let's skip to the solution and tell you a number.’
The group has had healthy numbers since its inception in 2018 and the membership varies from teachers to leaders and academics, depending on the chaos of the school calendar. I asked Steven about the reasons for the success of the group.
I wouldn't say it's that successful. It survives. I mean, research use, as you would know, is such a niche interest. There are academics who are writing it and reading it. But it's pretty difficult to get teachers engaged with it. So I would say the most important thing is the group that's built up around it. Because from the start, we’ve all understood that we're all teachers, we're all professionals, or something similar. If you can't do it, you don't do it. It’s not a case of ‘Oh, Sorry, I didn't do my homework!’
It's a low barrier to entry. It's free. It's accessible. Anyone can find it if they're willing to look hard enough. And then there's a strong sense of community around it. We've written a couple of papers about it1. By having an actual academic article and doing the video responses, you go deeper into it. Members are basing their responses on their context in the world and saying, this idea fits or doesn't fit. So you also get that global perspective when people other than Australians do it.
I have been surprised so far at the depth of engagement in relation to the time taken to engage. When writing this, I was reminded of Dr Jo Gleeson’s2 investigation into educators’ receiving and sharing research. It’s heartening to see over 30% of educators enthusiastic about research, but that leaves a lot who are not. I didn't think I would have time to add one more thing to my calendar and as always, I was wrong. If you need some good social pressure to make that first move, join EduReading and I will see you there.
Also speaking at researchED!
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Interesting blog, Rebecca. Interesting that you note that lifelong learning is a bit 'trite' - I don't disagree, but some learning institutions (I'm thinking HE) see this as very much their future.