Facing the Goldilocks dilemma: Is there too much or too little educational research?

JULIA FLUTTER, PROFESSIONAL DOCTORATE RESEARCHER, FACULTY OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK

At the Learning and Teaching Conference 2023 at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Gert Biesta raised a few eyebrows in his keynote address, challenging the audience with an important question: How much research does teaching need? Was Biesta was more likely to argue that too much, rather than too little, educational research is currently on offer? In fact, he went on to suggest that although there is a great deal of research, not all of this evidence supports the needs of educational practitioners. Too much educational research is narrowly focused and brackets out questions about values, in Biesta’s view: 

On the research side, evidence-based education seems to favour a technocratic model in which it is assumed that the only relevant research questions are questions about the effectiveness of educational means and techniques, forgetting, among other things, that what counts as “effective” crucially depends on judgments about what is educationally desirable.

In addition to large-scale research, practitioners also need research that enables them to ‘make such judgments in a way that is sensitive to and relevant for their own contextualized settings. The focus on “what works” makes it difficult if not impossible to ask the questions of what it should work for and who should have a say in determining the latter.’ (Biesta, 2007, p. 5) Biesta warns against research-informed practice adopting an uncritical fixation on empirical evidence and attainment indicators, which he has named the ‘global education measurement industry’ (Biesta, 2015), pointing out that ‘While there is an important task for educational research in finding, testing, and evaluating different forms of educational action, research can also play a valuable role in helping educational practitioners to acquire a different understanding of their practice, in helping them to see and imagine their practice differently.’ (Biesta, 2007, p. 19) Releasing teachers’ imaginations in this way opens up new possibilities for creating excellence in teaching – a collegial mission that lies at the heart of the Chartered College of Teaching’s manifesto for teacher professionalism. Let’s look at some examples of this possibility-creation in classrooms.

The Routledge Unlocking Research book series, edited by Dr James Biddulph and myself, offers some insightful stories illustrating this powerful releasing of teachers’ imaginations, using a values-led, collegial approach to research-informed practice. In this book series, over 150 contributing teachers and researchers from around the world talk about how they are unlocking the door between research and practice to open up new pathways for enhancing classroom practices (Biddulph and Flutter, 2021). It is important to acknowledge that bridging this gap can often be problematic, however, and our authors’ stories highlight some of the obstacles, constraints and uncertainties that they encounter. Becoming research-informed is not a straightforward process of gathering empirical evidence to create ‘toolkit’ repertoires of strategies that neatly fit every context and circumstance. It requires an individual and shared professional disposition that strives to embody ethical objectives and embraces an ongoing commitment to reflective practice and improvement.

The book series reveals a wide range of differing reasons for practitioners setting out on their values-led, research informed journeys of discovery, and each contributor has established their own way of engaging in and with research. For example, Rachel Sutton, Lucy Downham and Harriet Rhodes’ chapter from the first book in the series, Inspiring Primary Curriculum Design, presents an account of how developmental psychology research inspired their collaborative development of a play-based Key Stage 1 curriculum (Sutton et al., 2021). A framework of theoretical principles has also been used to guide curriculum decision-making in a chapter co-authored by former primary headteacher Richard Dunne and researcher Emilie Martin. They describe how the principles of Harmony Education were used to create a cohesive curriculum in a primary school (Dunne and Martin, 2021). Beyond its role in finding new directions for improving aspects of teaching and learning, research is significant to consideration of the ‘why’ questions with respect to the values, aims and purposes underpinning educational endeavours. In addition to reading published research, our teacher-authors’ stories show how they are increasingly becoming involved in generating research findings themselves, through action research, lesson study and practitioner enquiry. In their chapter in Sculpting New Creativities in Primary Education (Burnard and Loughrey, 2022), former primary headteachers Michelle Loughrey and Richard Gerver explain that becoming research-active in this way allows teachers and schools to take stronger ownership of change:

Change is exhausting when it is imposed on schools, or on educators, because there is a feeling of lack of control. Creativities curricula create change that schools and educators lead and own. This is the kind of change that is sustainable, rather than exhausting, because it is driven by the community and the professionals within it. Rather than lurching from one set of principles to another, change feels sustaining, sustainable and developmental. It is proactive rather than reactive.

Loughrey and Gerver, 2022, p. 103

Dame Alison Peacock, Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered College of Teaching, points out in the second book in the series, Reimagining Professional Development in Schools (Hargreaves and Rolls, 2021), that the future of teacher professionalism hinges crucially on ‘practice and policy [being] informed by a combination of professional knowledge and wisdom, combined with the theory of research evidence’ (2021, p. 21). Crucially, collaborative sharing of professional values and collegial knowledge-building provides the foundation for a new vision of teaching as an agentic, wise and trusted profession. Collegiality is fundamental to an enabling of profession-wide change. David Frost and his teacher-researcher colleagues in the HertsCam Network, an independent teacher-led research organisation based in Hertfordshire, remind us that ‘authentic and sustainable change occurs through a process of managed collaboration informed by scholarship and professional dialogue’ (2018, p. 2). In education, professional collegiality is energised through the transmission networks for collaboration and dialogue provided by ‘power stations’ such as university–school research partnerships, the Chartered College of Teaching, subject associations and teacher-led research movements. Returning to the question that Biesta asked at the beginning of this article, of ‘How much research does teaching need?’, an answer springs to mind that may remind us of Goldilocks’ choices in the famous children’s story: we need just the right amount of the right kinds of research. Teaching needs values-led, collegial research of the type that builds educational practitioners’ capacities for wise practice and enables them to become wiser practitioners. We need to generate an empowered teacher professionalism driven by the transformative energy of research-informed practice, enabling educational practitioners everywhere to plug into the collegial transmission network of shared professional knowledge and values.

A postscript: Writing history

A few years ago, when I was Research Partnerships and Network Manager for the Chartered College of Teaching, an intriguing email landed in my inbox. It was from a family historian who was asking for information about the letters ‘MCP’ used after the name of their ancestor, Professor John Jackson. Jackson was a member of the College of Preceptors in the 19th century, and the postnominals stood for ‘Member of the College of Preceptors’. (Founded in 1846, the College of Preceptors was granted the first Royal Charter for Teaching, now held by the Chartered College of Teaching.) Looking further into the records on the professor’s career revealed a fascinating story. Jackson was a pioneering teacher-researcher who became an international authority on the pedagogy of handwriting. His influential book, The Theory and Practice of Handwriting (1894), had revolutionised classroom practice by promoting the idea that the traditional, cursive handwriting taught in schools – the slanted, copper-plate script you might find in Victorian letters – should be replaced by an easier-to-produce, upright style, which is still taught in classrooms today. Jackson’s ideas, based on his careful observations in the classroom and on evidence from medical research about posture and children’s development, spread rapidly through the teacher networks of which he was a member and his publications. From 1847, the College of Preceptors issued its own newspaper for teachers, the Educational Times and Journal of the College of Preceptors, which became an active resource for discussing pedagogy and subject knowledge across disciplines (the Educational Times has been indexed for its mathematical questions and solutions provided by members in the 19th century – https://educational-times.wcu.edu), in a similar way to today’s online forums and social media communities for education practitioners. Jackson’s pioneering research-informed practice illustrates the far-reaching possibilities opened up through connecting theory, research and professional practice, and is testimony to the power of the ‘transmission lines’ for sharing collegial professional wisdom through professional bodies and networks.