FoE Research Seminar: Dr Scott Clarke: Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitude to Research, School Culture, and Student Achievement

In England, there is a contentious drive pushing schools, and teachers within those schools, to provide research-informed practice. Proponents of research-informed education propose that educational research should be communicated to schools where it can be read by teachers and incorporated into their practice to improve teaching quality and subsequently student achievement.. Two surveys were distributed across 38 mainstream, state-funded secondary schools; the first was distributed to the person responsible for teachers’ CPD in each participating school to identify the extent to which that institution is working towards developing the dimensions of a research-informed. The second survey was distributed to teachers across all participating schools to identify: a) their awareness of well-established educational research findings, b) their perceptions of the usefulness of educational research findings for guiding teaching practice, and c) steps taken at an individual level to maintain currency with educational research.

Analyses revealed that most schools place substantial importance on developing a research-informed culture but are more reserved in implementations to reach that goal. Generally, teachers’ ability to identify well-established educational research findings is similar to that expected by chance. No statistical relationship was identified between school research-informed culture, teachers’ awareness of well-established educational research findings, and student achievement.