Programme 374, Chris Brown on Research-informed Teaching (8-10-19)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney

On this week's programme I discuss how research can inform teaching with Professor Chris Brown from Durham University's School of Education. Professor Brown discusses his work with teachers in professional learning networks, how teachers can apply research in their schools, and the barriers to doing so.

Among the topics discussed are the following:

• How frequently do teachers consult research to solve problems of teaching?
• The need to draw first on teachers’ knowledge and experience
• How does research add to, challenge or deepen teachers’ knowledge?
• The importance of teachers collaboratively engaging with and looking at research
• Having an “evidence champion” in a school and partnerships with higher education institutions
• The quality of research available to teachers (original, significant, robust methods)
• Different kinds of research (Stokes’s quadrant)
• Carol Weiss and instrumental research use, conceptual research use and symbolic research use (9’22” – 10’08")
• Drawing on research to develop theories of action
• Teachers’ access to published research
• Networks of teachers and effective change management (17’36). The focus of the four whole-day workshops each year is:
  1. Vision and engagement with research
  2. Trialling
  3. Change Management
  4. Impact
• Leadership and degree centrality (24’53”)
• Evaluating “best practice” (27’58”)
• Areas of research that have been particularly helpful in informing teachers’ practice (30’26”)
• Factors that influence what and how research influences policy (31’49”)
• Professional Learning Networks (34’45”)
• The role played by encouragement, trust, social influence, and innovation in promoting research-informed practice (35’59”)
• Avoiding edu-myths or other dead-ends in research (39’39”)
• What are schools for (40’51”)
• A teacher who had a significant impact on him (42’17”)
• What inspires him (43’17”)

Among the people named by Chris Brown in the course of the interview are Stephen Ball, Jean Baudrillard, Alan Daly, Jim Spillane and Carol Weiss, some of whom have appeared on previous episodes of Inside Education: Ball, Spillane.

The paper that I reported on in the research section is Fan, H., Xu, J., Cai, Z., He, J & Fan, X. (2017). Homework and students' achievement in math and science: A 30-year meta-analysis, 1986-2015.