Lesley Saunders

1
Towards an understanding of research evidence
or pedagogy?

• Lesley Saunders
• Policy Adviser for Research
• General Teaching Council for England
• Applied Practice-Based Educational Research
• Quality, Application Impact
• Institute of Education Conference
• 17 November 2006

2

• It takes an extraordinary concatenation of
  circumstances for research to influence policy
  directly. rather research helps people
  reconsider issues, it helps them think
  differently, it helps them re-conceptualise what
  the problem is and how prevalent it is, it helps
  them discard some old assumptions, it punctures
  old myths  (Weiss)
• A single research study will not lead to dramatic
  change in what teachers do, nor should it do so.
  What research can, and must, do is add to
  teachers understanding and skills and, in that
  way, lead to better teaching (Hegarty)

3
My themes this morning

• Symbolic role of research?
• A discourse of evidence?
• A discourse of pedagogy?
• What else might be important?

4
Symbolic role of research?

• Research under attack (quality, relevance,
  accessibility, etc.)
• expectations of educational research?
• symbolic role of research in relationship between
  policy practice in education?
• understanding policy as a practice?
• meanings of research in different contexts?

5
My working assumptions

• bounded rationality bounded by political
  pressures, cultural norms, organisational
  priorities, workload
• characteristics of social science (provisional,
  incomplete, context-specific, unpredictable
  outcomes) vs. solid ground for decision-making
• knowledge management needs social relationships
  more than systems
• research data, concepts, tools, critiques,
  theories, values

6
A discourse of evidence?

• Mode 1 knowledge creation
• Apparatus of systematic reviews, databases,
  portals
• Scientific, generalisable, objective, public
• Accumulation
• Application
• Dissemination communication (information)
• About use relevant, accessible, impactful
• Presiding genius Popper?

7
A discourse of pedagogy?

• Mode 2 knowledge creation
• Apparatus of case studies, networks,
  collaborative enquiry
• Heuristic, hermeneutic, intersubjective, intimate
• Engagement
• Transformation
• Mediation dialogue (activity)
• About learning generative, meaningful,
  influential
• Presiding genius Vygotsky?

8
Risks difficulties?

• Growing appetite for evidence produces
  evidence-lite info-nuggets?
• Engagement underplays creation of knowledge?
• Popperian model too demanding e.g.
  falsifiability?
• Vygotskyan model turns into another orthodoxy?
• Conundrum of scaling, fidelity, etc. hearts
  minds or engineering model?

9
What else might be important?

• thick descriptions of policy political
  contexts?
• theorisation, theoretical frameworks, theories
  of change?
• wider range of opportunities processes for
  interrogation interaction?
• positive spin on provisionality of research?
• room for what has yet to be imagined, is still in
  the future?

10
Practitioner vs. academic knowledge

• An alternative set of comparisons?
• situated........abstract
• contextualised.......generalised
• short-hand.long-hand
• practical (problem-solving).scholarly
  (curiosity)
• familiar....strange

11
Having ones cake.

• evidence pedagogy both rational,
  truth-oriented (not revelatory)
• both depend on deliberation, dialogue, judgement
• evidence pedagogy important for both policy
  practice
• getting more pedagogy into policy?

12
Or something completely different?

• Research as a basic human right
• the capacity to make disciplined inquiries into
  those things we need to know but do not know yet
  (Appadurai)
• Not just emancipatory research but research as
  emancipation (Lingard)

13
Wikis, commons, search engines virtual research?

• Creative freedom or free-for-all or take-over?
• How to warrant knowledge created?
• Role of professional/academic researchers?
• ?
• ?
• ?

14

• E-mail lesley.saunders_at_gtce.org.uk
• Website http//www.gtce.org.uk/research/