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Bridging the gap between research andpracticeDonald McIntyre aa University of Cambridge , UKPublished online: 20 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Donald McIntyre (2005) Bridging the gap between research and practice,Cambridge Journal of Education, 35:3, 357-382, DOI: 10.1080/03057640500319065
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Bridging the gap between research and
practice
Donald McIntyre*
University of Cambridge, UK
The premise of this paper is that the acknowledged gap between research and practice is primarily
a gap between two sharply contrasting kinds of knowledge. The nature of this contrast is described
and it is suggested that these two kinds of knowledge are at the opposite ends of a spectrum of
kinds of knowledge related to classroom teaching and learning. Three possible ways of bridging
this gap are explored. The first of these is derived from research. To bridge the gap, it is suggested,
several steps are necessary from each of the two extremes before a balanced dialogue is likely to be
possible. The process culminates in the critical trial by teachers of research-based suggestions in
the context of their own practice. A second complementary way of bridging the gap is through the
choice of research strategies designed for that purpose. Three principles that might guide the
choice of such strategies are suggested and exemplified; and it is noted that relatively little
educational research in the UK has been in line with these principles. It is also noted that this
second approach can facilitate, but not replace, the first. The third way of bridging the gap is
through the development of ‘knowledge-creating schools’ and the related idea of ‘Mode 2’
research. Being located near the middle of the continuum, and being designed to incorporate the
complementary strengths of both ends of the continuum, such research might eliminate the gap
entirely. Despite major issues concerning the validation and dissemination of knowledge claims,
the development of all schools as knowledge-creating schools is seen as an attractive idea, but not
one that can replace the first approach.
Introduction
In recent years, both educational researchers and teachers have been under criticism,
especially in England, because of their failure to ensure that the practice of teaching
in schools is soundly based on research findings. Hargreaves (1996), for example,
complained that ‘teaching is not, at present, a research-based profession. I have no
doubt that if it were, teaching would be more effective and more satisfying.’ (p. 1) As
a result, ‘the £50–60 million that we spend annually on educational research is poor
value for money in terms of improving the quality of education provided in schools’
(Hargreaves, 1996, p. 1). Similarly, a review of educational research commissioned
*University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2PQ, UK.
Email: [email protected]
Cambridge Journal of Education
Vol. 35, No. 3, November 2005, pp. 357–382
ISSN 0305-764X (print)/ISSN 1469-3577 (online)/05/030357-26
# 2005 University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education
DOI: 10.1080/03057640500319065
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by the DfEE concluded that ‘if the purpose of educational research is … to inform
educational decisions and educational actions, then our overall conclusion is that the
actions and decisions of policy-makers and practitioners are insufficiently informed
by research’ (Hillage et al., 1998, p. 46).
These critics, and many others, have seen the problem as being primarily one of
the way in which educational research is organised, but as being greatly exacerbated
by the readiness of both researchers and teachers to accept the status quo as
satisfactory. For Hargreaves (1996), the ‘fatal flaw’ was that ‘it is researchers, not
practitioners, who determine the agenda for educational research’ (p. 3). And,
comparing teachers to doctors, he judged that ‘the significant difference between the
professions … is that whereas doctors are demanding and getting more evidence-
based research, teachers are not even seeing their severe lack of evidence-based
research as a problem in urgent need of remedy’ (p. 4). Meanwhile, ‘researchers
continue their work in their own self-validating terms; they are accountable to
themselves, so there is absolutely no reason why they should change’ (p. 4).
My starting point in this paper is to acknowledge the fact that, in general, there is a
large gap between, on one hand, the knowledge that educational research has
generated and, on the other, the practice of teaching: few teachers would or could
claim that their practice is informed to a substantial degree by educational research. I
acknowledge, furthermore, that the major function of educational research should be
to inform policy and practice.
I want to take a step back to consider the question of how research could or should
helpfully inform practice. I do not believe that there is any clear or shared
understanding of the nature of this problem, far less of the kinds of research or of
researchers that could best contribute to a solution. The first task therefore is to
suggest my own understanding of the nature of the problem, before then going on to
consider the merits of some general approaches to its solution.
In outline, I shall be suggesting that the fundamental problem to be confronted is
not one of how educational research should be organised, far less one of the
complacency or of the self-interests of different groups of educational workers, but
rather a problem of two sharply contrasting kinds of knowledge. The knowledge
needed by classroom teachers in their everyday work and the knowledge that
educational research is well equipped to provide are, I will suggest, of two very
different kinds. I shall go on to suggest a possible continuum of different kinds of
knowledge, each with its own distinctive purpose and discipline, but each frequently
wrongly judged according to criteria more appropriate to other points on the
continuum. It is in terms of this articulation of the problem that I shall go on to
consider three mutually complementary solutions to it.
Two sharply contrasting kinds of knowledge
My argument in this section is that the gap between research and practice is wide,
not primarily because educational researchers are self-indulgent or irresponsible in
the kinds of research that they do or in the ways that they report it, nor because
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teachers are unprofessional or anti-intellectual in their approach to practice, nor
even because of inappropriate organisational arrangements, but primarily because
the kind of knowledge that research can offer is of a very different kind from the
knowledge that classroom teachers need to use.
Teachers of course use many different kinds of knowledge in their teaching,
including for example knowledge of the subjects that they teach, knowledge about
children’s learning and thinking, knowledge of curricula and examination require-
ments, knowledge of the individual pupils they teach and many types of contextual
knowledge. Our concern is with their pedagogical knowledge, the knowledge that
directly informs their own practice in managing their classrooms and in facilitating
their pupils’ learning. This knowledge of course draws on all the other kinds of
knowledge. It is, however, ‘knowledge how’, while the other kinds of knowledge are
mainly ‘knowledge that’, or propositional knowledge. It is especially to this
pedagogical knowledge that research on classroom teaching and learning might
reasonably be expected to contribute. But here immediately we find the first
contrast between the two kinds of knowledge, for it is to propositional know-
ledge that research of all kinds leads. So while research-based knowledge, like the
other kinds of knowledge, may be used as a contributing element to pedagogical
knowledge, it certainly cannot simply be translated into pedagogical know-
ledge. And other contrasting features make the contribution of research quite
problematic.
A second contrasting feature follows from this first one. Knowledge of how to do
things must above all be pragmatic, with primary concern being focused on the
usability and usefulness of the knowledge. This is reflected in the priority that
classroom teachers give to practicality: ideas for practice are of no value if they do not
meet this criterion, which includes both the feasibility of using them and their
effectiveness in context. Researchers, in contrast, are obliged to prioritise other
values, those relating to the clarity and coherence of their arguments and to the truth
of their conclusions.
A further contrasting feature stems from the fact that research-based propositions
must, if they are to have any potential value, be abstract and theoretical or in some
other way generalised. The pedagogical knowledge needed by teachers, in contrast,
has to be such as to enable them to address the context-specific and indeed unique
characteristics of every class, pupil, lesson and situation with which they have to
deal. While some kinds of research may pretend to offer recipes for teaching, even
beginning teachers quickly learn that recipes do not generally work in teaching.
What works for one teacher, or in one school, or with one class, or on one occasion,
very likely will not work for another. Teachers depend on their own, often very
individual, ‘schemata’ for recognising classes or pupils or situations as being similar
to others they have dealt with before, each schema incorporating a range of more-or-
less remembered individual cases, and on corresponding repertoires of actions that
have seemed to work in some circumstances in the past. But what they do has to
depend on their judgements about what is appropriate in the unique circumstances
of the particular case that faces them.
Bridging the gap between research and practice 359
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A related contrast is between the impersonal nature of research-based knowledge
and the highly personal nature of teaching. The quality and effectiveness of
classroom teaching is dependent above all else on the knowledge, values,
commitment, human insights, skills, sensitivity, enthusiasm, humanity and, in
summary, the person of the teacher. Many different kinds of people are
schoolteachers; and research has failed to demonstrate that some kinds of personality
are more suitable than others for teaching. Yet it is overwhelmingly on themselves as
people, with all their diverse personalities and ways of thinking, that teachers
primarily have to depend in their classroom teaching. While research-based
knowledge about good practice has to be formulated in generalised terms, classroom
teaching is necessarily and very fundamentally personalised.
Such contrasts contribute to an overarching difference between the complexity of
teaching and the simplicity of research findings. The potential value of research
depends on researchers abstracting from all the complex details of the situations they
study a limited number of important organising ideas. The whole purpose of
research is to find ways of interpreting or explaining phenomena through identifying
patterns and formulating abstract ideas that reflect these patterns. Teachers in
contrast have to deal directly with the complexity of classroom life. Doyle (1980)
perceptively articulated some of the elements of this complexity: multidimensionality,
the many different kinds of things with which teachers constantly have to concern
themselves; simultaneity, the need to deal with these different things all at the same
time; immediacy, the need to deal immediately with most of the issues that arise;
unpredictability, never knowing with confidence what will happen next; publicness, the
fact that almost everything one does, and its consequences, are in full view of some
thirty observant pupils; and history, the fact that what is done on any one occasion
will be interpreted in the light of previous events and will have repercussions in the
future. Teachers have to act in ways that take account of this complexity. Brown and
McIntyre (1993) found that teachers, in their minute-by-minute decision-making
about the actions they should take, typically found it necessary to take account not
only of their own multiple goals but also of many different kinds of consideration
relating to their pupils and, for example, to time, space, resources, the wider
environment and themselves. For researchers, the challenge is to find simplifying
patterns that might help teachers to deal with this immense complexity.
The disciplines of educational research and of classroom teaching are also sharply
contrasted in the kinds of thinking they require. Good research depends heavily on
explicitness and on demonstrably rigorous rational argument. Teachers, in contrast,
working in the isolation of classrooms and needing constantly to make quick
decisions, have to depend on tacit thinking and on giving priority to the fluency of
their decision-making rather than on the rigour of the underlying arguments. In
teaching, furthermore, as in many professions (cf. Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986), the
development of expertise seems to involve a process of moving away from conscious
deliberation towards holistic recognition of situations and intuitive judgement about
the actions needed. Deliberative thinking is needed only when novel or problematic
situations arise; and even these, as Schon (1983) has argued, tend to be ‘situations of
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uncertainty, instability, uniqueness and value conflict’ (p. 49) in which it is creative
thinking rather than rational argument that is most needed.
Given these contrasts between the kinds of knowledge that research can generate
and the nature of the expertise required for classroom teaching, it does not seem
difficult to understand why classroom teachers do not find research-based
knowledge easy to use. One might easily be inclined to conclude, indeed, that
research-based knowledge has little to offer to those who would wish to develop
expertise in the practical craft of teaching. I would strongly reject that proposition
and would instead agree with Eraut who, when faced with such a suggestion, argued
that its plausibility stemmed from
the failure to recognise how theory gets used in practice, that it rarely gets just taken off
the shelf and applied without undergoing some transformation. The process of
interpreting and personalising theory and integrating it into conceptual frameworks that
are themselves partly inconsistent and partly tacit is as yet only minimally understood.
(Eraut, 1994, p. 157)
The task of the rest of this paper is to explore how theory, or more specifically
research-based knowledge, can most effectively be generated or used in ways that
make it helpful in informing the thinking of practising teachers. How can the gap
between research and practice be effectively bridged? Before looking for possible
solutions, however, I will first briefly suggest a simple framework in terms of which
the problem and potential solutions can be formulated.
A continuum of kinds of knowledge
The two sharply contrasted kinds of knowledge that have been discussed do not of
course represent the only kinds of research-based knowledge that teachers may
consider or of pedagogical knowledge that they use. I believe that the account
accurately represents, on one hand, the kind of research-based knowledge that is
actually and properly published by educational researchers in both quantitative and
qualitative traditions in good research journals; and, on the other hand, the kind of
pedagogical knowledge that skilled and committed classroom teachers use in their
day-to-day teaching. I also want to suggest, however, that these two kinds of
knowledge represent the extreme points on a continuum along which several
different kinds of knowledge, each with its own distinctive purpose and discipline,
may be ordered. For the purposes of this paper, it will be helpful to distinguish the
following points on the continuum:
1. Craft knowledge for classroom teaching
2. Articulation of craft knowledge
3. Deliberative or reflective thinking for classroom teaching
4. Classroom action research
5. Knowledge generated by research schools and networks
6. Practical suggestions for teaching based on research
7. Reviews of research on particular themes
8. Research findings and conclusions
Bridging the gap between research and practice 361
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I do want to emphasise, however, that this is a continuum. In practice, a good deal ofknowledge and thinking will fall between the points identified on the continuum.And many other distinctions might fruitfully be made for other purposes,distinctions that would involve highlighting additional points on the continuum.
This is a continuum of kinds of knowledge about classroom teaching and learning.
As one moves along the continuum, each of the characteristics that we have
described as contrasting at the two ends of the continuum changes, although not
necessarily evenly at every step. Nor is there necessarily complete uniformity in
relation to each of the characteristics at the same point. It would be tedious to take
space here to justify the claim that the kinds of knowledge identified do fall into the
suggested sequence on a continuum; I believe that this will become apparent from
the remainder of the paper.
Much more is understood about the more extreme points on this continuum than
is yet understood about the middle points, and in particular about the possibilities,
strengths and limitations of ‘research schools and networks’. This will be reflected in
the way that possible ways of dealing with the gap are explored in this paper. First, a
position will be revisited that is relatively well established in theoretical terms,
although less influential in practice, involving the development of relationships
between the two ends of the spectrum. Second, the significance of the choice of
research strategies for bridging the gap will be considered. Finally, the possibilities
will be explored of developing ‘research schools and networks’, perhaps by
combining some of the strengths of both extremes.
A first way of bridging the gap: dialogue between the two ends of the
continuum
A first suggested way of dealing with the gap starts from the understanding that the
two contrasting kinds of knowledge at the ends of the spectrum both have inevitable
limitations but also have considerable and mutually complementary strengths. This
first way of dealing with the gap is in my view well conceived but has not received the
attention it deserves.
Three elements are necessarily involved in this way of dealing with the gap. First,
there has to be a recognition—which we shall assume here—that the characteristics
of classroom teachers’ craft knowledge and of research-based knowledge, as we have
described them, are in no way inappropriate but, on the contrary, are in both cases
necessary for their purpose, and also mutually complementary in potentially highly
fruitful ways. Second, realisation of the potential value of their complementarity
depends upon some movement, in both cases, from the extreme ends of the
continuum. Third, time, energy and helpful procedures are needed to foster effective
dialogue, exploring relationships between their two kinds of knowledge, including
the development of new syntheses of the two kinds of knowledge. When productive,
this process of dialogue—which might be either metaphorical or literal—should
culminate in classroom teachers themselves investigating the merits of research-
based proposals by testing them through action research in their own teaching. This
approach is based therefore on the premise that research can be helpful in improving
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the quality of classroom teaching, but equally on a second premise that research
cannot be helpful except through quite complex processes culminating in classroom
teachers engaging in dialogue with research-based proposals.
Moving from research-based knowledge to practical suggestions for teaching
Teachers’ craft knowledge and research-based knowledge are so very different that
they often cannot easily or usefully be directly related to one another. It is therefore
necessary to develop modified forms of these two extreme kinds of knowledge, in
each case moving nearer the middle of the continuum. Considering research-based
knowledge first, we can draw on well-established understandings of how research can
influence practice. Those who have studied the impact of research on practice tend to
agree that it is unusual for research-based knowledge to be directly applied and used in
practice; and many have concluded that research has mainly an indirect influence. Many
studies, including that by Nisbet and Broadfoot (1980)—described by Hargreaves
(1996, p. 10) as ‘the classic and highly influential statement of this position’—have
concluded furthermore that because the impact is indirect, often being mediated
through several intermediary processes, it is inevitably very difficult to assess the extent
of this impact. Similarly Taylor (1973) argued that educational research
exerts its influence by helping to determine the agenda of problems and difficulties, and
in providing some of the elements that shape individual and group orientations towards
particular issues … [We] need to be aware of simplistic assumptions regarding the
actual and likely pay-offs from research. Some of these are readily traceable, but most
make their way into thinking and practice less directly—through the literature on
education … and through courses, conferences and lectures … (p. 200)
There seems indeed to be widespread agreement that, as a matter of fact, the
influence of research, has been and remains, primarily of this indirect kind. What is
at issue is whether or not this is a satisfactory state of affairs. The important question
is whether this pattern of indirect influence is the best possible normal way for
research to inform practice. Given the nature and the extent of the gap between the
knowledge that research can generate and the pedagogical knowledge that teachers
use in practice, I believe that this could well be so, agreeing with Hammersley (2002)
who, describing this position as ‘the moderate enlightenment model’, concludes that
‘using it to guide our research, even in our dealings with those who fund or use it, is
on balance the best available option’ (p. 56). His overall argument is that the best
that researchers can generally aspire to is throwing light on issues that are important
for practice, and that this is very different from offering complete solutions to
practitioners’ problems. Among the limits to the knowledge that research can supply
are, he persuasively argues, its fallibility, its narrow focus on single issues, its
generality as opposed to the contextually specific nature of teachers’ decisions, and
its proper concern with what is true in contrast to teachers’ necessary concern with
what they should be trying to do and to achieve and how they might set about
achieving it. For all these reasons, researchers cannot produce the knowledge base
that teachers need for practice, but only a limited amount of helpful knowledge.
Bridging the gap between research and practice 363
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Several of the factors identified by Hammersley make research-based knowledge
unhelpful even as a basis for dialogue with teachers. It is usually only when research
findings have been synthesised with other relevant knowledge that practical
suggestions can be generated that are worthy of the attention of busy teachers.
Such synthesising is a complex undertaking, in which several different tasks are
necessarily involved. There is first the task of judging the technical quality of the
research, a task in which the selection of papers for publication in academic journals
plays a crucial part. A second key task is the review and synthesis of different
research findings on particular themes. It is perhaps not widely enough understood
how misleading the findings of even well conducted single investigations frequently
can be. In reviews, critique of technical quality has to be combined with appreciation
of the distinctive contributions of different kinds of research, together with
imaginative thinking about how particular findings can contribute to overall
understanding. It is only then that the knowledge generated from such reviews
can usefully be related to other practical considerations in order to generate useful, if
properly tentative, proposals for practice. These practical considerations should
include, for example, curriculum and examination requirements, teachers’
established knowledge and practices, the time, space and resources available to
teachers, and variations in the conditions within which teachers work, including
school and community cultures. The generation of proposals for practice is typically
done through, for example, curriculum planning, teacher education, textbook
writing or the development of official pedagogical guidelines. Because of the
importance of practical considerations in the development of such proposals, these
are tasks that are likely to be done well only by experienced teachers; so it is crucially
important that good reviews of research literature should be written and published in
ways that make them easily accessible to teachers.
Practising teachers can reasonably be asked to consider as potentially helpful for
their practice only the kinds of thoughtful and informed proposals generated on the
basis of such several processes. As Hammersley (2002) points out, there is every
possibility that premature attempts to encourage the use of research findings can
damage the quality of practice rather than enhance it. Educational researchers,
subjected as they have been to sustained simplistic propaganda urging them to
ensure that their findings are demonstrably relevant to practice, have tended in
recent years to be much too ready to short-circuit the proper mediating processes
that have been outlined. Such undue haste will enhance neither the reputation of
research nor the quality of practice.
This kind of movement from the conclusions of research to practical proposals for
teaching narrows the gap between research and practice in that it tackles the
problems of research fallibility and to some extent transforms research-based
knowledge into broadly based, practical suggestions for the work of teaching. Such
generalised practical suggestions are, however, still quite remote from the tacit,
schematic, intuitive thinking on which classroom teaching depends. Even more
fundamentally, such proposals cannot take account of the many distinctive
contextual realities with which teaching has to deal, and so
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the crucial point is that the proposal is not to be regarded as an unqualified
recommendation but rather as a provisional specification claiming no more than to be
worth putting to the test of practice. Such proposals claim to be intelligent rather than
correct. (Stenhouse, 1975, p. 142)
It is of course the case that well founded, well expressed, powerful ideas in
whatever form, whether that be specific research findings or whatever, can capture
the imagination of thoughtful teachers and perhaps transform their practice. To
suggest that teachers or anyone else learns only in well planned ways would be
absurd. But that is not a good reason for not making the best plans possible. So those
who take on the task of making research useful for teachers, whether researchers
themselves, government agencies or whatever their position, must recognise that
substantial work, and therefore substantial resources, are needed in order to generate
‘intelligent proposals’. But they must also recognise that, even when such proposals
have been generated, much more remains to be done.
Moving from teachers’ craft knowledge to more deliberative thinking
The tacit and schematic nature of teachers’ craft knowledge, and their ability to use
this knowledge intuitively, enable them to deal fluently with the complex realities of
classroom teaching. It is very difficult however to relate such knowledge and thinking
effectively to suggestions for classroom teaching based on research. In order to
promote such engagement, therefore, it is necessary to develop modified forms of
these kinds of knowledge and thinking, moving away from this extreme end of the
continuum.
Much of teachers’ professional knowledge and thinking is of course already
explicit and deliberative, especially that which is used in planning lessons or other
units of teaching. It is the knowledge that they do not usually need to make explicit
that tends not to be automatically available for relating to research-based ideas. It is
not easy for teachers to express such tacit knowledge in words, to communicate
schemata that are fluently used in practice in terms of propositions, or to articulate
intuitive decision-making in the form of reasoned arguments for acting in certain
ways. Nonetheless, most teachers seem to be able to do this when a problem or some
new kind of situation arises, or when they simply want to reflect on their practice
in order to learn from their experience (Dewey, 1933; Schon, 1983). More generally,
research (e.g. Brown & McIntyre, 1993) suggests that most teachers can
articulate their professional craft knowledge when there is a good reason for doing
so.
In the context of the present discussion, the good reason for teachers to articulate
their craft knowledge is to consider the merits of attractive, or in some other way
significant, research-based suggestions for practice by relating them to their existing
practices and the knowledge and thinking behind them. By bringing both kinds of
knowledge into the form of explicit ideas for how to do things, such articulation
makes them relatable to each other. They still differ markedly, however, in that
research-based suggestions tend to be relatively simple, impersonal and generalised,
whereas the classroom craft on which teachers depend is complex, personal and
Bridging the gap between research and practice 365
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contextualised. This leaves therefore the need for the third element in this way of
dealing with the gap between research and practice, the task of exploring the viability
and effectiveness of research-based suggestions through relating them to the
explicated professional craft knowledge of the teachers concerned.
Dialogue between professional craft knowledge and research-based knowledge
If conclusions from research are transformed into robust and informed practical
proposals, and if this is complemented by a corresponding articulation of relevant
aspects of teachers’ professional craft knowledge, then one has a basis for
deliberative thinking or practical theorising about the significance of the research
for practice. Such thinking should be in the form of a dialogue between the two kinds
of knowledge, in which the limitations of each kind are exposed by the suggested
merits of the other, and the possibilities examined of each being adaptable in order
to enhance the quality of the other. This will depend on the recognition or
development of shared educational values and shared general assumptions about
classroom teaching and learning. In general, questions about teachers’ established
craft knowledge will tend to be concentrated on whether or not it already does
equally effectively what the proposed innovation purports to do. Questions about the
suggested innovations are likely to be about their adaptability to fit the distinctive
realities of the context and the characteristics of the teachers.
Such deliberation can take the form of individual teachers’ internal dialogues,
debate among a group of teachers who work together or an overt dialogue between
teachers and researchers. Just as teachers may have things to learn about the
limitations of their existing practice, and the merits of the research-based proposals,
so equally the researchers will have things to learn about the limitations of the
proposals (and of the research), and about the merits of teachers’ existing practices.
This is not of course an entirely symmetrical situation, since it is the researchers who
are proposing change and the teachers who would have to implement the change.
Because of that, the dialogue should be even more concerned with a critique of the
proposed changes from the perspective of existing practice and of the local context
than with a critique of the existing practice. Too often in the past the emphasis has in
contrast been on critique of existing practice and on the merits of proposed research-
based changes. This has in large measure been because of inadequate recognition
and articulation of teachers’ professional craft knowledge. The consequence
has frequently been that the innovators have appeared to win the argument
but that teachers then either successfully resist the innovation or, if obliged to
implement it, do so in ways that divest it of many if not all of the benefits it
might have. When, on the other hand, research-based proposals are accepted on
the basis of honest dialogue, the proposals are not only likely to be implemented
thoughtfully in practice but are also likely to lead to genuine improvement in
teaching, because they will have been accepted as offering appropriate solutions to
professionally recognised problems and as providing real opportunities for
improvement.
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Classroom action research
This process of dialogue finds its fullest form through classroom teachers themselves
investigating the merits of research-based proposals through action research on their
own teaching. Armchair practical theorising can achieve a lot, especially in clarifying
claims to be tested and questions to be asked, but ultimately the claims can only be
tested and the questions answered by putting them to the test of classroom use.
Teacher research has in England in the last few years experienced a surging
popularity and high levels of government endorsement. For example, there have
been several cycles of research scholarships for teachers from the Teacher Training
Agency, the General Teaching Council and the Department for Education and
Skills. In addition, a National Teacher Research Panel has been set up, the members
of which exercise considerable political influence on national committees. Teacher
research is part of the political and high profile world of research grants, evaluation
panels and national research committees. But there is considerable ambiguity as to
the intentions behind this promotion of teacher research, and considerable danger
that it is being misused.
Both Sally Brown and Kenneth Ruthven, in their papers in this Special Issue,
point out that reviewers have consistently found the academic quality of teacher
research to be weak. Kenneth concludes from his examination of sympathetic
academic reviews of teacher research that
practitioner research has been treated primarily as a form of professional development,
in which respect it has been judged successful in contributing both to deepening insight
and improving practice. However, teacher research has a much weaker record of
contributing to the accumulation of trustworthy public knowledge, or even of drawing
systematically on that knowledge (p. 417).
It should surprise nobody that the research conducted by practising teachers tends
to be judged as making only a weak contribution to public knowledge. Classroom
teaching on its own is a very demanding and constraining activity; and academic
educational research is, like classroom teaching, a distinctive, demanding, highly
skilled and time-consuming activity. So why are already busy teachers being urged to
pursue such research? The more significant problem, however, is that this fashion
may distract teachers from the fundamental educational purpose that only they can
pursue, that of each achieving a deepening understanding of his or her own
classroom by ‘sophisticating the beholding of it’ (Stake, 1995). It was Lawrence
Stenhouse who first inspired the ‘teacher as researcher’ movement in the UK, and
there is a need to re-assert the purposes of teacher research as suggested by him:
The uniqueness of each classroom setting implies that any proposal—even at school
level—needs to be tested and verified and adapted by each teacher in his own
classroom. The ideal is that the curricular specification should feed a teacher’s personal
research and development programme through which he is progressively increasing his
understanding of his own work and hence bettering his teaching. (Stenhouse, 1975,
p. 143)
While Stenhouse saw himself as working within a curriculum development
framework, he interpreted ‘curriculum’ very widely: ‘I have identified a curriculum
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as a particular form of specification about the practice of teaching … it is a way of
translating any educational idea into a hypothesis testable in practice. It invites
critical testing rather than acceptance’ (1975, p. 42).
This kind of approach, Stenhouse recognised, ‘depends upon the capacity of
teachers to take a research stance to their own teaching. By a research stance, I mean
a disposition to examine one’s own practice critically and systematically’ (1975,
p. 156).
In this view, then, teachers need to treat proposals for change critically, but they
can do so only if they can also consider their own practice critically. The nature and
consequences of one’s current practices need to be critically understood if the effects
of implementing a proposed change are to be understood. This does not imply that
the teacher needs to achieve the objectivity of an external observer, since the teacher
is first and foremost an interested actor. What is needed is ‘a sensitive and
self-critical subjective perspective’, which is ‘difficult enough’ (Stenhouse, 1975,
p. 157).
A ‘research stance’ also meant for Stenhouse the systematic examination of one’s
practice as a teacher, ‘founded in curiosity and a desire to understand; but it is a
stable, not a fleeting curiosity, systematic in the sense of being sustained by a
strategy’ (Stenhouse, 1981, p. 103). The merits of a proposed innovation could not
be assessed through the casual or occasional gathering of evidence. Thought needed
to be given to the ‘hypotheses’ to be tested and to the nature of relevant and
sufficient evidence needed for critically testing these hypotheses.
There is then nothing easy about the ‘research stance’ that Stenhouse wanted
teachers to adopt, and which is still vital today if research-based ideas are to
contribute to teachers’ good practice. Stenhouse recognised not only that teachers
are the key decision-makers, the only people able to decide about the curriculum in
their own classrooms, but also that the autonomous ‘research stance’ that this
implies for them is a highly demanding one. But this does not mean that teachers
should accept any responsibility for contributing to general public knowledge. In
particular,
… the teacher in this situation is concerned to understand better his own classroom.
Consequently, he is not faced with generalizing beyond his experience. In his context,
theory is simply a systematic structuring of his understanding of his work. (Stenhouse,
1975, p. 157)
Ideally, teacher research should be a collaborative activity, both because it can be
strengthened through the availability of observers’ or pupils’ evidence about
classroom events and also because the quality of enquiry can be enhanced through
the critical contributions of helpful colleagues, and therefore
Teachers working in such a tradition need to communicate with one another. They
should report their work. (Stenhouse, 1975, p. 157)
That does not mean, however, that teachers should feel themselves under any
obligation to publish their work beyond their own groups. Teachers’ research, said
Stenhouse, should not necessarily disseminate outside the collegiate group: ‘Perhaps
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too much research is published to the world, too little to the village’ (quoted by
Groundwater & Dadds, 2004, p. 241).
Stenhouse’s conception of the teacher as researcher is as important now as it was
when he articulated it 30 years ago. In particular, it provides an essential step in the
process of bridging the gap between research-based proposals and teachers’ own
classroom practice. It is as true as ever today that the uniqueness of each classroom
setting implies that any proposal needs to be tested and verified and adapted by each
teacher in her or his own classroom. It is this kind of teacher research that is vital to
the quality of classroom teaching.
Summary
The length of this section reflects, I believe, the genuine complexity of what is
involved in the surest known way of making use of the findings of research so as
intelligently to inform the practice of teaching. Bridging the gap between the findings
of academic educational research (of whatever kind, quantitative or qualitative) and
the very different kind of knowledge that teachers use, and need to use, to inform
their professional craft of teaching, is not a simple matter. The quality of the
research, and what can be concluded from the findings of different research projects
on the same theme, have first to be considered. Only then is it possible for practically
sensitive, thoughtful and well informed people to generate research-based sug-
gestions for practice. But in order that individual teachers, or groups of teachers
working together, can properly assess any such proposals, they themselves need to
bring to consciousness and to articulate the relevant elements of their knowledge
that, for normal teaching purposes, are appropriately tacit, schematic and intuitive.
They then need to deliberate on the potential advantages and the problems of using
the proposed innovations, and on the ways in which both the proposals and their
existing practices might be adapted in order to use them together most fruitfully.
Finally, individual teachers need to try out the proposals in practice in their
classrooms, through a process of systematic and self-critical action research. That,
then, is the lengthy process through which the findings of research can confidently
and intelligently be used to inform classroom practice. I know of no system
anywhere in which the need for all these several processes is recognised and
supported, although each of the elements is readily identifiable in various contexts. It
is interesting to note that Kenneth Ruthven, in his paper in this Special Issue,
suggests the need for something quite similar in relation to the specific case of
teaching strategies promoted by the English government.
A second way of helping to bridge the gap: using research strategies
specifically designed to inform practice
Are there particular kinds of educational research that are well designed for bridging
the gap? Should educational researchers who want their work to have relevance for
practice be encouraged to focus on particular kinds of research?
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The suggestion of this section is that there are indeed research strategies that are
especially well conceived to inform teachers’ classroom practice. Such strategies do
not cut out any of the steps in the long process suggested in the previous section to
be necessary. But the necessary culmination of that long process was seen as being a
critical dialogue between research-based suggestions for good classroom practice
and teachers’ articulated accounts of the craft knowledge informing their existing
practices. The fairly obvious suggestion is now made that it is research well
conceived from the beginning with the intention of facilitating such critical dialogue
between research-based knowledge and teachers’ established practices that is most
likely to be effective in doing so. More specifically, it is suggested that research is
likely to be well conceived for this purpose in so far as it has the following key
characteristics:
(i) it should generate valid new understandings of realities of classroom teaching
and learning;
(ii) these new understandings should provide a basis for clear indications to
classroom teachers of how they might be able to improve their practice;
(iii) the new understandings, and the suggestions for improvement to which they
lead, should make sufficient sense to teachers to persuade them to take the
suggestions seriously and so to engage in dialogue about them.
Perhaps surprisingly in retrospect, researchers have been slow to recognise the
significance of the first of these characteristics. It has always been easy to criticise
teachers, and none have been more active and articulate in their criticisms than
educational scholars and researchers. That has been because it has never been
difficult to recognise that most classroom practice falls short of what thoughtful
educators from Socrates to Dewey have seen to be desirable. But understanding why
this was so, and so for the criticisms and suggestions for change to become informed
and intelligent, depended on researchers beginning to seek systematic and
penetrating accounts of how teachers and pupils act in classrooms, of the
consequences of these actions, and especially of why they act as they do. This
seems historically to have been a difficult lesson to learn.
Although we have a long way to go in this respect, we should also recognise that
substantial progress has been made in the last half-century. It is now quite widely
accepted that serious discussion of classroom teaching needs to be based on evidence
about what happens in classrooms. Until quite late in the twentieth century, most
commentaries on teaching, and most ‘theory’ in teacher education, were based
primarily on the study of psychology and other academic disciplines rather than on
the study of what happens in schools and classrooms. Such theoretical commen-
taries, not grounded in a good understanding of classrooms, were frequently
unhelpful.
In practice, furthermore, educational researchers have also moved well beyond
‘methods experiments’, a dominant form of educational research in the first half of
the twentieth century, but one that was based on the fallacious view that the quality
of classroom teaching depended on a few big decisions, often made by ‘experts’
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outside the classroom, rather than on many different decisions, most of them
necessarily made inside the classroom. Because they take little account of the
complex realities of classroom teaching,
The experimental methods might satisfy the cultural rituals of the research community
but would produce little of value, and do much probable harm, to the professional life
of teachers. (Nuthall, 2005, p. 900)
(Sadly, however, there are still those who argue for the superiority of such
experimental methods, now more commonly described as ‘randomised controlled
trials’, on grounds that have nothing to do with the nature of classroom teaching.)
Some strategies widely adopted by educational researchers over the last half-
century have been aimed at embodying both of the first two key characteristics
identified above. One of these was the process-product strategy, through which
quantitative variations in diverse reliably described and potentially key facets of
teachers’ and pupils’ activities were related to outcomes measures, for example of
pupils’ attainments or attitudes (cf. Dunkin & Biddle, 1974; Brophy & Good, 1986).
Such research certainly revealed much about classroom teaching. It also supported
and challenged teachers by indicating kinds of teacher activity that seemed to be
conducive to desirable learning outcomes. Among its main limitations, however,
were that the whole approach was not well geared to taking account of the specific
contexts of classroom actions, it rarely described classroom events in ways that took
account of teachers’ or pupils’ own understandings of these events, and it did not
explore teachers’ or pupils’ reasons for acting as they did. The validity of the
understandings that it generated was therefore somewhat limited; and it certainly
was not well conceived for making sense to teachers and so for facilitating dialogue
with them.
Much of the classroom research of the last 25 years has, in contrast, been of a
qualitative nature, concerned, for example, to explore the distinctive ways of
thinking of expert teachers (e.g. Leinhardt & Greeno, 1986; Berliner, 1987), or the
nature of teachers’ practical or craft knowledge (e.g. Brown & McIntyre, 1993;
Connelly et al., 1997). Such studies have certainly, as intended, enhanced our
understanding of classroom teaching and the expertise it involves. The under-
standings generated are less vulnerable to questions about their validity than those
from process-product studies, although their generalisability remains uncertain. But
most of such studies have not even aspired to having the second of the characteristics
outlined above, that of offering direct indications of how teachers could improve
their practice. Much of the criticism of educational researchers, especially in the UK
(e.g. Hargreaves, 1996) seems to have been inspired by this kind of apparent lack of
concern on the part of educational researchers to contribute to the improvement of
classroom teaching.
The UK’s large, publicly funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme
(TLRP) was a direct response to such complaints, and so the research projects it has
funded have been under pressure to be manifestly useful in contributing to the
improvement of classroom practice. Sally Brown’s paper in this Special Issue looks
thoughtfully in some detail at some of the ways in which they have tried to do this.
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The ‘crucial commitment … to involving users of research in the planning and
implementation of the research itself’ (p. 388) that she describes relates closely to my
suggestion that research is most likely to be useful to teachers if it is conceived from
the beginning with the intention of facilitating critical dialogue with teachers, and
especially with the third necessary characteristic proposed here for such research,
that it should be directed from the beginning towards making suggestions for
improvement that make good sense to teachers. Quite simply, in so far as the
suggestions stem from the thinking of classroom teachers, they are more likely to
make sense to other classroom teachers.
The likelihood that teachers will find research-based suggestions sensible is
enhanced if the research is designed not only to address concerns shared by the
researchers and the teachers engaged in it, but also if it is aimed at finding and
elucidating teachers’ ways of resolving these concerns. Just two such studies will be
mentioned here as examples, two that have all three of the characteristics identified
as desirable.
One is the classic Ford Teaching Project (Elliott, 1991), in which John Elliott and
Clem Adelman collaborated with teachers who were committed to using inquiry
methods of teaching but who had found that this was a far from unproblematic
enterprise. In this project, the teachers adopted an action research approach to
elucidating the principles and problems involved in such teaching and to generating
hypothetical solutions. The two academic researchers supported this action research
and themselves led a second-order investigation into the nature of teachers’
problems and solutions. While the academic researchers took responsibility for the
rigour of the design and the quality of the data gathering and analysis, the teachers
contributed extensively not only by deciding what would happen in their classrooms
but also to discussion of the meaning of the data and to generating the hypotheses
and the theory of teaching that emerged from the study.
Another similar design, but one not based on action research, was that for
Learning without limits (Hart et al., 2004), a project aimed at understanding how
classroom teaching can be undertaken without categorising pupils in terms of
‘ability’, or therefore doing all the damage to which such categorisation leads. Nine
teachers who convincingly claimed to avoid ability categorisation in their teaching
were selected, through national advertisement and an extensive interviewing process,
and case studies of their teaching were conducted over the course of a year. As with
the Ford Teaching Project, evidence about the teaching was collected from the teachers’
perspectives but also through extensive observation and through pupil interviews.
Similar too was the active involvement of the whole team in interpreting the data and
in critical examination of the academic researchers’ claims to have found general-
isable patterns across teachers. In each of these cases, it may be argued, the whole
research programme was conceived and maintained in dialogue with the teachers
involved without any loss of academic accountability for the rigour of the study. Such
studies are not rare, but they remain the exception rather than the rule.
In this section, it has been argued that bridging the gap between research-based
knowledge and teachers’ practice can be facilitated through the use of research
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strategies that are well conceived from the beginning with the intention of facili-
tating dialogue between the two ends of the spectrum. It has been suggested that
research designs should have three specific characteristics if they are to achieve this
purpose, and I have tried to exemplify both how easy it is for research strategies to
lack such characteristics but also how entirely possible it is to develop strategies
that do have these characteristics. It has to be emphasised, however, that the
adoption of such research strategies is not in itself a way of bridging the gap. In
particular, it is not a way of avoiding the need for any of the several steps that
were suggested in the previous section to be necessary for generating productive
dialogue between the two ends of the continuum. But it should make these steps
easier.
A third possible approach: starting from the centre of the continuum
A radical proposal
The two approaches outlined so far for bridging the gap between research and
practice have accepted the breadth of that gap and have asserted the complexity of
the task of bridging it. If the practice of teaching is to be usefully informed at all by
research, then, it has been argued, we need not only well conceived research
strategies, but also the several demanding steps that have been outlined for bringing
the two ends of the continuum together: there is no alternative, at least for the
present. But what if schools were different? Is it possible to imagine schools that were
so different from those we know that they themselves could be places where not only
the practice of teaching and learning but also much high-quality research on
teaching and learning would be located. And could that solve the problem? That is
what is suggested by Hargreaves (1999) with his vision of ‘the knowledge creating
school’.
Hargreaves is well aware that his idea is a visionary one, with little basis in either
current practice or current knowledge: ‘the knowledge creating process and its
management can be analysed from two perspectives—the characteristics of knowl-
edge-creating schools and the dynamics of knowledge-creating activities. As yet
little is known about either’ (Hargreaves, 1999, p. 125). Furthermore, when he
speculatively but plausibly lists fifteen ‘conditions and factors favouring knowledge
creation in schools’, he notes that ‘there is only a limited overlap between these
features and what has now become the standard characterisation of the effective
school, from which many school improvement schemes derive. Not all schools that
are effective by such conventional criteria will succeed in professional knowledge
creation’ (p. 127).
Hargreaves’ analysis of key current realities, from which he takes his starting point,
has much in common with what has been said here. In particular, he accepts that the
practice of teaching is based largely on tacit and local contextual knowledge and that
this practice can be influenced by new ideas only through processes of the
‘externalisation’ of tacit knowledge and its ‘combination’ with the new ideas. He
recognises too the great difficulty of doing useful high-quality research on teaching
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and learning and in particular emphasises the great challenge for the knowledge-
creating school of applying the necessary ‘demanding forms of knowledge validation
to supply evidence of the effectiveness of its new practices’ (p. 129). And he agrees
that ‘it is not merely that researchers and teachers are in different locations, making
intensive interaction difficult to achieve, but each side starts from a very different
knowledge-base’ (p. 135), thus making it difficult for the parties to work together in
the creation of usable knowledge. He recognises too that in present circumstances it
is difficult for teachers to do research of high quality.
In the light of such problems, Hargreaves concludes that radical change is needed:
‘If the objective is the creation of high quality knowledge about effective teaching
and learning that is applicable and actionable in classrooms, then practising teachers
have to be at the heart of professional knowledge creation and researchers will have
to get closer to them’ (Hargreaves, 1999, p. 136). That seems close to what has been
asserted here in the previous section, but Hargreaves wants something more than
well-conceived research strategies. What he wants is something that will obviate the
need for all the complex processes that have been seen here as necessary for bridging
the gap. He sees these processes as ‘dissemination’ processes and suggests that
‘effective dissemination entails a reconstruction of relations between schools and
universities, one in which both knowledge creation and its dissemination are
reconceptualised’ (p. 136).
The model that Hargreaves offers for this reconceptualisation is Mode 2
knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994), a new pattern of knowledge
production that, it is claimed, has evolved in recent years in science and technology.
Among the core characteristics of Mode 2 knowledge production (as summarised by
Gibbons et al., 1994, pp. 3–8) are that
N knowledge is produced in the context of its application: it is produced by people who
need to solve a practical problem of their own;
N the knowledge is transdisciplinary, being produced within the distinctive evolving
framework of the problem it is created to solve;
N it is undeniably a contribution to knowledge, with its own distinct theoretical
structures, research methods and modes of practice, and its cumulative development;
N the diffusion of the results is initially accomplished in the process of their
production. Subsequent diffusion occurs as the original practitioners move to new
problem contexts;
N knowledge production is heterogeneous in terms of the skills and experience
people bring to it … In Mode 2, flexibility and response time are the crucial
factors and because of this the types of organizations used to tackle these
problems may vary greatly … people come together in temporary work teams and
networks which dissolve when a problem is solved or redefined.
N Social accountability permeates the whole knowledge production process …
working in the context of application increases the sensitivity of scientists and
technologists to the broader implications of what they are doing … because the
issue on which research is based cannot be answered in scientific and technical
terms alone;
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N Criteria to assess the quality of the work and the teams that carry out research in
Mode 2 differ from those of more traditional, disciplinary science.
In relation to this final issue of quality control, Gibbons and his colleagues are at
pains to emphasise continuity with Mode 1 research and its rigorous standards, but
also the importance of additional criteria such as efficiency and usefulness:
This does not mean that ‘anything goes’ or that standards will be lowered. Rather,
traditional scientific criteria will have to be qualified by other criteria that can claim
equal legitimacy. (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 153)
There is too a strong focus in Mode 2 on specific problems in specific contexts:
The dynamics of Mode 2 knowledge production is … a matter of … an interest in
concrete and particular processes and systems rather than in general unifying principles
(Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 43)
… a pluralism of approaches which combine data, methods and techniques to meet the
requirements of specific contexts … (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 44)
The concepts of webs and networks are important to Hargreaves, who quotes the
following passage:
The … firm, then, takes on some of the characteristics of a spider’s web. Each node is a
problem-solving team possessing a unique combination of skills. It is linked to other
bodies by a potentially large number of lines of communication. To survive, each firm
must be permeable to new types of knowledge and the sector as a whole becomes
increasingly interconnected. (Hargreaves, 1999, p. 122)
and suggests that here we have ‘an intimation of what might be more than the
knowledge-creating school, but a knowledge-creating school system—a web of
interlinked knowledge-creating schools’ (Hargreaves, 1999, pp. 139–140).
For Hargreaves, the key characteristic of Mode 2 knowledge is that it ‘evolves
within the context of its application’, and he rightly suggests that it would be a
radical step for serious educational research to be undertaken in these terms.
However, some of the other characteristics of Mode 2 would not involve radical
changes for educational research. Whereas one of Mode 2’s most radically new features
is said to be its transdisciplinary nature, educational research is already transdisci-
plinary. Indeed, the account by Gibbons et al. of how different teams of specialists
come together in Mode 2, according to the specific nature of the problem to be tackled,
is highly reminiscent of the way in which teams already come together in university
faculties of education for specific research projects. Similarly, the broadening of quality
control criteria in Mode 2 beyond traditional scientific criteria would not be at all
new for educational researchers. But does the parallel with Mode 2 offer us a helpful
way forward for making educational research useful for classroom practice?
Evaluating the proposal
If we relate this idea of knowledge-creating schools or networks to the continuum of
types of knowledge about teaching outlined earlier, it is apparent that it sits
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somewhere near the middle of that continuum. On one hand, it is based on the
practical classroom craft knowledge of teachers, and moves on from there along the
continuum, articulating and problematising that knowledge. It goes substantially
further than Stenhouse’s conception of teachers investigating ideas for their
individual use through classroom action research, since it is collaboratively planned
research aimed at generating knowledge for much wider use. In relation to the other
end of the continuum, on the other hand, this kind of research is both concerned
with practical suggestions for teaching, taking account of all the wide range of
criteria that this implies, and also research conceived and conducted in and for a
specific context. So, sitting as it does near the middle of the continuum, does this
kind of research and the knowledge that it generates obviate the need for all the
complex processes that are otherwise necessary for bridging the gap between
research findings and the practices of teaching and learning that these findings are
intended to inform?
Hargreaves (1999) rightly highlighted two problematic issues that he hoped could
be solved through the reconceptualisation of research that the idea of knowledge-
creating schools and networks would involve: these were the problems of validation
and dissemination. Considering first the latter of these two issues, a clear convergence
of insights is apparent between the idea of Mode 2 outlined by Gibbons et al. (1994)
and recent educational research initiatives in England involving practitioners. From
the former, we learn that
the diffusion of the results is initially accomplished in the process of their production.
Subsequent diffusion occurs as the original practitioners move to new problem
contexts. (Gibbons et al., 1994, p. 5)
In practice this has important implications:
In Mode 2, knowledge production and knowledge appropriation converge. The
outcomes are likely to be commensurate with the degree of involvement. Only those
who take part in knowledge production are likely to share in its appropriation. (Gibbons
et al., 1994, p. 165)
Sally Brown, in her paper in this Special Issue, quotes several examples from the
Teaching and Learning Research Programme suggesting that teachers’ engagement
with research findings tends to be dependent on them having been actively involved
with the research, or at least having some special grounds for seeing the research as
being linked to themselves. She notes too the importance not only of this sense of
personal relevance, but also of
the level of teachers’ familiarity with the particular ideas that are the focus of the
research evidence (and) how these ideas relate to the ways in which they already make
sense of their own classroom work. (p. 395).
Simons et al. (2003), reflecting on their evaluation of the Teacher Training
Agency’s School-based Research Consortium Initiative, in which four consortia
investigated pedagogical themes, conclude not only that ‘Many teachers did find that
engaging in research themselves was a prerequisite for engaging in a meaningful way
with research carried out by other people’ (p. 353) but also that other teachers within
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the same schools and consortia were able to learn from the research only if quite
demanding cognitive, affective and social conditions were met:
Generalization takes place … but only if the relationship to the given situation is
sufficiently retained for others to recognise and connect through common problems and
issues. However, this seems a necessary but not a sufficient condition for generalisation.
Our evidence also suggests that generalisation is made possible by relational and
situational factors, such as the confidence and trust that sharing teachers have in each
other …the appeal to validity in this setting is not confined to methodological canon,
still less to abstract notions of the weight of evidence. It is also grounded in professional
agreement as to the usefulness or significance of particular insights, and in the trust and
confidence that may be placed in the colleagues offering them. Evidence is still
subjected to testing, but testing within these confidence limits, and against criteria
agreed among colleagues. (Simons et al., 2003, p. 359)
Simons et al. (2003) emphasise especially the importance of social influence in the
context of such collaborative research initiatives:
In the context of the consortia, a decision to adopt practices on the basis of evidence
produced by teachers, and by teachers and researchers working together, was not simply
individual. It was commonly a process of collective judgement and shared confidence in
the findings that had already been demonstrated through the process of collectively
researching and analysing the data. (Simons et al., 2003, 360–361)
It seems clear then that those teachers who have been active in such research are
likely to benefit from it, as too, given some very demanding conditions, may others
within the same schools and even in wider networks; but there is certainly no
expectation that institutions other than those actively involved in the research will
benefit. There is then no magical solution here to the problem of ‘dissemination’. In
place of the complex processes currently necessary for effectively bridging the gap
between research and practice, we have a vision of a new kind of research system
from which the only schools likely to benefit will be knowledge-creating schools,
with a new demanding kind of dissemination system within, and going no further
than, networks of knowledge-creating schools. This is an attractive vision if and only
if all schools can be enabled to become knowledge-creating schools.
There remains however the matter of the validation of knowledge claims based on
the research done in knowledge-creating schools. Such claims will generally tend to
be about teachers’ practices, sometimes about the qualities of the practices or the
conditions in which they are viable, but primarily about their effectiveness, and the
conditions for their effectiveness, in facilitating useful learning or other benefits for
pupils. Unless clear, and clearly valid, claims of these kinds can be made, the
argument for knowledge-creating schools as a way of resolving the gap between
research and practice becomes empty. And indeed, in a context where quality
control is more broadly based, validation is likely to become a more complex
concern, with practices having to be validated not only in terms of their effectiveness,
but also in terms of their educational merits, cost-effectiveness, social acceptability
and general practicality.
This task is further complicated by the priority that Hargreaves rightly gives to
research strategies that take teachers’ newly developing or established practices as
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their starting points (as did the research strategies commended in the previous
section, as exemplified by Elliott (1991) and Hart et al. (2004)). The great
advantages of such strategies are that the practices with which they are concerned are
already tuned to the complex realities of schools and classrooms in general and of the
particular contexts in which the teachers are working, and that they are therefore
likely to have high credibility to other teachers in these schools and networks. The
problem of validating such practices, in a way that makes them useful to others, is
that of abstracting their key effective generalisable features from the enormously
complex real personal practices of the individual teachers.
The problem is not that high-quality school-based research is any more complex
than university-based research, but rather that it isn’t any simpler. However, that is a
matter of some controversy. McIntyre (2004), reviewing the literature on
researching schools, predictably found that it was in order to improve their own
practice, rather than to be ‘knowledge-creating schools’, that schools generally
undertook research. Given that kind of motivation, there was great ambiguity among
teachers in such schools as to whether they needed to aspire to meeting the
demanding standards of academic educational research. David Jackson, who had led
the development of what Ebbutt (2000) described as ‘an embedded research culture’
in one school, expressed the view that:
The word ‘research’ brings with it a number of associations related to rigour, reliability,
validity, generalisability, ethics, scale, objectivity—and so on. In reality though what we
are talking about when engaging with school-based enquiry activities does not have to
conform to the same exacting standards. There is a term known as ‘good enough
research’ which means generating research designs that are viable and reliable in
relation to their purpose and their context, rather than to the purity of the knowledge or
its generalisability. School-based enquiry is often ‘good enough research’ (Jackson,
2002)
For the limited purpose of improvement of the individual school, this view might
have some merit if it were clearer why normal research standards are seen to be
unnecessary and also what criteria would be appropriate. McIntyre (2004) suggested
that it might be possible to build on Stenhouse’s insight that teachers who engaged
in classroom action research for their own professional purposes, not for wider
public knowledge, did not need to make explicit the complex realities of their
classroom situation and practice, which they knew intimately and necessarily took
for granted in their daily work, and which would therefore underlie some of the
inferences leading to their research conclusions:
It may be … that it is possible to extrapolate from Stenhouse’s idea for individual
teachers in their own classrooms, the idea of doing research on certain highly selected
themes within a community context where a great deal can be taken for granted. Working out
what that would imply is likely to be a challenging task, but it may hold the key to what
is ‘good enough research’ in the context of school improvement. (McIntyre, 2004,
p. 18)
On the other hand, if the intention is that the research of a ‘knowledge-creating
school’ should generate knowledge that has a wider validity, then there is no reason
why the validity criteria for such research should be different from those applied in
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academic research. While Hargreaves (1999) seems to accept the need for such
rigorous research designs, evidence and inferences, it is not at all clear that such
acceptance is widespread among enthusiasts for school-based research.
If schools are to improve, as they certainly must, then one of the best hopes for
them doing so is through teachers’ use of research-based knowledge. And available
evidence suggests that it is through their own serious engagement in research, in
their own schools, and in collaboration with their own colleagues, that teachers are
most likely to learn to use research-based knowledge. But teachers can reasonably be
asked to engage seriously in research only if their conditions of work change
radically: their schools need to be firmly led and committed to being, in a serious
sense, researching schools; teachers themselves can do serious research only if they
are asked to do much less of other things, such as classroom teaching; they must be
given time and other resources for research; they must be supported in learning to do
research and in doing it; the social organisation of schools must facilitate
collaborative research; and it must be rewarding for teachers to do research. At
the same time, it must be recognised that there is still a great deal to be learned about
what being a researching school means and implies, and about what such schools
can reasonably be expected to deliver. What is certainly clear is that they will not be
able to do anything approaching the whole job of educational research. As
Hargreaves (1999, p. 141) writes, ‘Mode 2 educational research (should not) be seen
as endangering Mode 1 educational research. The two can and should thrive side by
side, feeding off each other’.
Conclusion: let’s not expect simple solutions
In this paper I have tried not to offer any new ideas, but rather to consider the merits
of a number of different complementary ideas for making educational research
helpful for informing practice. My starting point was a recognition that there is a very
large gap between the kind of knowledge that good scholarly educational research
can at best provide and the kind of knowledge that teachers most use in good
classroom teaching. Between these two extremes, it was suggested, a continuum of
different kinds of knowledge could be identified. Given such a starting point, it was
not surprising that I concluded that effective bridging of the gap depends on a
number of deliberate and quite demanding steps, by researchers, teachers and
others, moving through successive stages along the continuum. The best advice I can
give is that all these steps are important, and that if research frequently does not
connect with practice as much as it ought to, that is because it is common for several
of these steps to be neglected.
Secondly, and again unsurprisingly, it does of course help if research is
intelligently planned from the beginning with the intention of helpfully informing
the practice of teachers. It was suggested that three main criteria needed to be met if
this purpose were to be achieved, criteria which, it was admitted, have been met by a
disappointingly small proportion of the research carried out in the UK over the last
quarter-century:
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(i) the research should generate valid new understandings of realities of classroom
teaching and learning;
(ii) these new understandings should provide a basis for clear indications to
classroom teachers of how they might be able to improve their practice;
(iii) the new understandings, and the suggestions for improvement to which they
lead, should make sufficient sense to teachers to persuade them to take the
suggestions seriously and so to engage in dialogue about them.
It is of crucial importance to recognise, however, that although the use of such
research strategies are likely to greatly facilitate the use of research findings for
practice, it in no way obviates the need for the multiple steps suggested earlier to
bridge the gap.
Finally, the paper looked at one suggested plan that might get rid of the gap,
Hargeaves’ idea of ‘the knowledge-creating school’. Located near the centre of the
continuum, the knowledge generated by school-based research carried out by
teachers and researchers might integrate the strengths of both the extremes of the
continuum. Closer examination does not undermine the attractiveness of the idea,
but does suggest that its value is likely to depend on all schools being knowledge-
creating schools, on high standards of rigour in the research, and on transformed
working conditions for teachers. It might well be a great idea, but it is no simple
solution. Furthermore, at best knowledge-creating schools would complement
rather than replace academic educational research; and the gap between the latter
kind of research and the practice of teaching would remain to be bridged.
There are then lots of exciting possibilities to be pursued for bridging or narrowing
the gap between research and practice, but no simple solutions. We must remember,
furthermore, that bridging the gap between teachers and researchers is only one
element in the struggle to make research useful. Our most serious problems, as
Graham Nuthall (2004, 2005) suggests, may not be in the gap that divides teachers
and researchers, but in their shared preconceptions:
much of what we do in schools and what we believe about teaching and learning is a
matter of cultural routines and myths. What is more, much of the research on teaching
and learning in classrooms is itself caught up in the same rituals and myths and sustains
rather than challenges these prevailing beliefs. (Nuthall, 2005, p. 896)
So there’s still lots to do!
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