Evidence-based teaching: advancing capability and capacity for enquiry in schoolsCase study

April 2017

Clare Lloyd

Medway Teaching Schools Alliance

ContentsContents 2

Executive Summary 3

Introduction 4

Outline of project and context 4

Approach adopting to gather data 6

Qualitative research approach 6

Open questions pre and post 7

Focus group 8

Interviews 9

Focus Groups 9

Feelings about the projects 10

Journals 11

One to one interviews 12

Challenges 15

Successes 15

Recommendations/ Next Steps 16

References 18

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Executive SummaryAn Alliance of 88 schools were motivated to understand what worked in embedding evidence based practice within the schools. There were three project groups with a project lead assigned to the groups. The projects were Maths, Assessment without Levels and Literacy. The qualitative research method was used and data was gathered by diaries collected from the project leads, interviews and focus groups. There were barriers identified in embedding evidence based practice such as access to journals and teacher time constraints. The successes identified were the development of consistency across the schools with the projects, a core group that served as a potential snow ball effect and great collaboration. Recommendations were to include leadership to become associated with evidence based practice. Also to enable choice for teachers to attend particular groups within their career professional development programme. Further recommendations were to engage with researchers in Universities to study the impact of such projects and for researchers to work with teachers to create a culture of research driven schools.

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Introduction

Outline of project and contextThe school has an alliance of 88 schools and were motivated to introduce opportunities for learning communities to develop. To do this a steering group of lead professionals were identified to develop and expand groups across the alliance.

There are three research groups across the alliance for the purpose of this project:-

1. Maths Project called ‘Connect4Maths’

2. Assessment without levels

3. Literacy Project

There were initially five groups but due to participant attrition the project reduced to three.

The research groups for the EBT project were originally selected based on the current networks which the alliance either had at the time, or were starting to form.  There were a number of working parties or networking groups which had been meeting for several months, but which were keen to steer to becoming more evidence based in their practise. The Manchester University bid was used to steer these groups from becoming discussion focussed to being research focused.  The hope was that this would give the steering groups a more strategic direction, which would therefore have greater impact on outcomes for children. It was also the aim to use the project to further equip the networking leads to become research practitioners. 

The Connect 4 Maths group had been set up as a result of joint working with the Local Authority, with the input of finances from them.  It has become a group for a focus on the Leadership of maths.  It was during this transition which it became a research community. 

The assessment without levels working party was newly formed, it was clear that this was going to have to have a primary focus on research due to the nature of their existence.  

The literacy group grew out of a previous piece of work and were about to begin a new project.  Tying in with this project allowed the project to become research driven. 

The groups already had a role in bringing people together, but as outlined above, this project allowed them to have a deliberate focus on research, with their leads better equipped and more considerate of the role of research in their work.  

The steering group leads meet once a term with the research lead responsible for writing the project report. The aim is to improve outcomes for students both in the primary and secondary schools within the alliance by engaging with research and putting theory into

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practice and importantly evaluating this practice in terms of school improvement. As schools are ever changing environments linked to changes in government and standards the teaching school alliance wanted to ascertain how to embed practices/initiatives within the schools effectively. This leads to the research question formulated: -

‘What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance?’

The impetus is to gather data which will enable a pragmatic and effective skills framework to share with future project leads to enhance capacity across the alliance and give capability skills.

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Approach adopting to gather data

Qualitative research approach

There are a range of approaches used in educational research to gather data for inference, interpretation and to make predictions. The techniques used for the purpose of this study adopted the qualitative approach namely, the structured interview approach with open questions structured in nature. The question formulated was interested in finding out processes that contribute towards embedding evidenced based practice within a number of schools so the researcher wanted to gather rich data that involved narratives that were not simply reduced to yes/no responses on a questionnaire. The general consensus is that qualitative research is a naturalistic, interpretative approach concerned with understanding the meanings that people attach to actions, decisions, beliefs, values and the like within their social world, and understanding the mental mapping process that respondents use to make sense of and interpret the world around them (Ritchie and Lewis).

In addition, focus groups were conducted to illicit qualitative responses. Furthermore, one-to-one interviews were undertaken with structured open questions. Content analysis was used for the one to one interviews to extract themes linked to the overarching question. ‘What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance?’

The impetus behind using open ended structured questions was to overcome issues of reliability. For example, the researcher being female and within a different status to the lead professional may impact the research therefore aims to reduce this confounding effect were addressed. In addition, studies have also shown that race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, status, social class and age in certain contexts can be potential sources of bias, i.e. interviewer effects (cf. Lee 1993; Scheurich 1995). Furthermore, interviewers and interviewees alike bring their own, often unconscious, experiential and biographical baggage with them into the interview situation. Hence, one way of controlling for reliability is to have a highly structured interview, with the same format and sequence of words and questions for each respondent (Silverman 1993).

The researcher employed to undertake the research project was considered to have competence in the field. For example, the researcher has a degree in psychology and has previously been actively involved in educational research. Furthermore, the researcher had previously led many projects across school systems. This potentially overcomes issues of reliability.

For instance, Kvale (1996: 148–9) suggests that a skilled interviewer should:

1. Know the subject matter in order to conduct an informed conversation

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2. Structure the interview well, so that each stage of the interview is clear to the participant

3. Be clear in the terminology and coverage of the material

4. Allow participants to take their time and answer in their own way

5. Be sensitive and empathic, using active listening and being sensitive to how something is said and the non-verbal communication involved

6. Be alert to those aspects of the interview which may hold significance for the participant

7. Keep to the point and the matter in hand, steering the interview where necessary in order to address this

In terms of validity it could be argued that the research is conducted in one location in the South-East of England and the sample size may be difficult to generalise so the data gathered may lack ecological validity. However, these limitations in educational research are challenged to inform educational practices and policy.

For example, Fitz-Gibbon (1985) cites the following:

1. Humble, small-scale reports which have simply been gathering dust may now become useful.

2. Small-scale research conducted by individual students and lecturers will be valuable since meta-analysis provides a way of coordinating results drawn from many studies without having to coordinate the studies themselves.

3. For historians, a whole new genre of studies is created – the study of how effect sizes vary over time, relating this to historical changes. (Fitz-Gibbon 1985: 46)

Open questions pre and post

As the project was so varied in terms of the nature of the educational interests explored, namely, Maths, Literacy and Assessment without Levels, the researcher adopted the qualitative research method as an approach using open ended questions. Bailey (1994) highlights that open-ended questions are useful if the possible answers are unknown or the questionnaire is exploratory. Since the research is attempting to capture specific unknown approaches to understanding capability and capacity with projects in the Alliance this method was considered the most appropriate. This enables an understanding of potentially complex issues enabling the steering group leads to write a free account on their own terms and therefore avoiding the limitations of the quantitative approach which has pre-set categories.

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The questionnaires were given during the two meetings, one in March 2015 and the other in May 2015 using the pre and post method. The questions initially at the beginning of the project were as follows: -

Pre: 25th March 2015. What have you found successful so far with your project? If relevant: What are the barriers you have faced? How have you dealt with these barriers? What strategies have you used for the implementation of your project? What resources do you require? How much funding do you require to implement the project? How have you been feeling about the project?

A follow up meeting asked the following same questions from the initial meeting. The impetus behind asking the same questions was to establish any changes which may have occurred during the course of the two terms during the project implementation. The questions asked were as follows.

Post: 20th May, 2015 What have you found successful so far with your project? What are the barriers that you have faced? How have you dealt with these barriers? What strategies have you used for the implementation of your project? How have you been feeling about this project?

Focus group

A focus group was set up which then addressed the specifics of the research question using the statement ‘capacity and capability’. Focus groups are a form of interview with the reliance on the interaction with the group who in this case are enabled to discuss the topic freely that is supplied by the researcher lead.

Focus groups (Krueger 1988; Morgan 1988: Bailey 1994: 192–3; Robson 2002: 284–5) are useful for

1. Orienting to a particular field of focus of developing themes, topic and schedules flexibly for subsequent interviews and/or questionnaires

2. Generating hypotheses that derive from the insights and data from the group

3. Generating and evaluating data from different subgroups of a population

4. Gathering qualitative data

5. Generating data quickly and at low cost

6. Gathering data on attitudes, values and opinions

Spider diagrams were created by the lead professionals who attended this meeting and the questions were placed in the centre of the map as follows:

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Focus Group: 20th May What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance? Capacity and Capability?

The lead professionals were asked to freely write ideas on the mind map for five minutes and then discussed the ideas written and made any changes as a result of the discussion to their mind maps.

Interviews

One to one interviews were undertaken between the project lead research and each of the lead professionals. Three interviews were therefore conducted. These were recorded and transcribed. The questions were open questions directly linked to the research questions and aims. They were designed to allow the lead professional to talk freely about their particular experience without group influence. It was considered appropriate because it would allow the lead professionals to be anonymous from the group and enhance reliability by encouraging greater honesty. Furthermore, by providing access to what is ‘inside a person’s head’, [it] makes it possible to measure what a person knows (knowledge or information), what a person likes or dislikes (values and preferences), and what a person thinks (attitudes and beliefs). (Tuckman 1972)

The questions asked were as follows:

Interview 16th July. Can you please describe your project? How do you feel the project has gone so far? What do you feel may enable the project to progress further? How do you feel the project could or would increase in capacity within the teaching alliance? If you could summarise the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance, what would you say?

Focus Groups

The first focus group meeting that took place introduced the question namely, ‘What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance? To illicit some ideas there were a number of open questions asked to the project leads. Key themes that arose were as follows: -

Successes1. ‘Some are in a more confident position than others to share and reason about issues’.

2. Some projects have attracted a lot of attention e.g. Assessment without levels was ‘welcomed by a number of senior and middle leaders’

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Barriers1. ‘Restrictions on time available’

2. ‘Access to materials available online’

Feelings about the projects1. ‘Teachers less experienced have less time to explore and think about different approaches’

2. ‘Give senior and middle leaders an access to research’

The second focus group meeting focused solely on the question itself and two mind maps were given out with the central themes as follows a) Capacity and Capability and b) What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance? The aim of the first central theme ‘Capacity and Capability’ was to gain an understanding from the project leads what their understanding of these concepts are in relation to the projects they were undertaking across the alliance. The second aim was to then allow the project leads to apply these concepts to the research question ‘What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance?’ Central themes from these maps were as follows:

Capability and Capacity Mind Map central themes Showing good practice

Research Literature

Active Participation

Application

Time/Making time rather than adding to the list

Identifying needs/areas of development

Focus Groups

Evaluation of practice and research

Group dynamics

Critical thinking

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Personality variable

Facilitator/Leader

Reliability of source (know where to find it, evaluate it, experience of literature

Group of ‘like minded’

Research Question ‘What are the processes involved in embedding evidence based practice within the teaching alliance?’ Mind Map central themes

Accountability

Linking it with Career Professional Development (CPD)

Addressing challenges and obstacles

Context awareness

Information (twitter)

Evaluation

Established group

Linking it together with School improvement plan

Confidence in subject matter

Sharing information with colleagues

Journals

Project leads were asked to keep a journal of their projects across the alliance. There was one journal from the group presented. For the purpose of this report key themes extracted were as follows: -

Share outcomes with other schools

Via e-mail progression maps were sent before the meeting via e-mail there were no comments, not sure if it had been read or was used

Need research articles to start debate

Articles sent delegates said they had read but could not remember the content

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Focus for class teachers is practical ideas which they can use in developing their pedagogical practice

One to one interviewsOne to one interviews took place with three of the project leads. The key impetus behind these interviews was to understand how the projects would progress further in terms of capacity within the teaching alliance and summarise processes involved to enhance capability. The aim was to allow the project leads to reflect on their journey so far without the influence of other projects leads and therefore enabling them to have an opportunity to give their responses individually. The interviews were fully transcribed and content analysis was undertaken extracting the following key themes: -

Interview 1Overview of project: The project involved working with an opera house whereby seven primary schools worked with local providers in cultural education to investigate using cultural resources such as places and providers to improve outcomes in primary literacy.

The key themes from the interview were as follows:

Barriers: ‘barriers that we’re having at the moment is how you measure sustainable progress across a number of schools when each school is using a different way of measuring the attainment of the children’

For the future, the project lead stated: ‘We’re hoping that this will be the first or one of the first product, projects along with some other work that’s been done already on using that understanding of ways to give children a cultural entitlement. So obviously there’s been a lot of research which the Royal Opera Housebridge have been very helpful in providing us on the benefits of cultural experiences in raising children’s attainment and their outcomes. We’re hoping that this will produce a model that other schools will be able to use our kind of places of local interest and some of our key practitioners in being able to embed that cultural entitlement in their curriculum’

Furthermore, the project lead added: ‘It’s the staff now being able to fit that into their curriculum’

In term of enhancing capacity: ‘We’re trying really hard to think about it now not just as in and out of the alliance, we’ve got a very close working relationship with the Local Authority and with the two teaching schools. So we’re trying to talk more in the language of enabling schools in ‘M (location hidden for ethical reasons)’ to have opportunities through each of those three groups so that all the children in Medway whoever they are have got this access.

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Linked to capability and capacity: ‘It’s knowing who the people are that have got the passion and experience and the capability to do the research, to find the information, and then trusting them is probably the right word, them, to find ways to make that accessible at the level of practice that people have’

Linked to capacity the role of Senior Leaders was mentioned: So Senior Leaders in terms of research ‘would slim line that down in terms of the content that then needs sharing with the staff and then we would talk to the staff in terms of the actions that they then need to take into their everyday practice. So that they understand that what we’re asking them to do is informed by the research but they haven’t necessarily had to read it all and analyse and evaluate it themselves because the key messages have then been driven and you then get the consistency across schools as well.

Interview 2Overview of project: The project involved working with a small group of schools that are Maths leaders that represent schools across the local authority. The goal was to look at research that’s behind some of the key areas in the effective leadership of mathematics.

The key themes for the interview were as follows:

Key success identified by the project lead: ‘I think the highlights of the project would be one of the subject leaders who, after the session, erm that we did on reasoning last time, I sent out the meeting notes and she then sent a reply to all saying “I’m delivering this to the staff in school and I found these articles and these videos that you might find really useful to share” so it’s getting them out there looking erm for the information as well’

In terms of building capacity: ‘It’s about sharing that message out to a lot of the schools, erm there’s there are still a number of schools who don’t realise that the alliance is running these little groups and that the alliance has got a hub for English and a hub for maths.’

Embedding evidence based practice the lead identified: ‘If you’re a professional and you’re a part of the teaching alliance, you need to recognise that continued professional development is an expectation of the role that you have.’

Interview 3Overview of project: The project involves assessment without levels focus group which is aimed at language leaders from primary and secondary school. The aim is to understand factors that can influence assessment and effective assessment.

The key themes for the interview were as follows:

The project lead identified there was a lack of clarity on the understanding of what assessment without levels was based on Government initiative: ‘that led to a conference

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on assessment without levels just to give us a better idea and listen to people who you know have done some work and kind of led the process’.

Linked to the project growing in capacity and capability the project lead identified: ‘Now I really think that err the group we’ve got at the moment is more of a kind of core group but eventually I would like to err you know kind of create a situation where what we’re doing as a focus group fits more into CPD in specific schools.’

In terms of building capacity within the alliance the project lead identified the need to train trainee teachers entering the profession: ‘So the new generation of teachers coming into our schools they’ve got a better understanding of what the recent changes to assessment for each of the lessons actually mean and how they can be implemented in classrooms’.

Linked to building capability and capacity the project lead suggested in order for the evidence based teaching to progress: ‘We start from something really small err literally a person or a group of people, very small group of people really investing time and energy because it is a thankless exercise and does require a lot of err commitment’.

In terms of sustainability linked to growing capacity the lead asserted. ‘It’s very much of meeting and sharing and when you leave the project you need that kind of energy behind you feeling where ok there is a place and a time and a level of support and interest attached to it’.

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ChallengesParticipant attrition was an issue with the research as the original group of 5 projects leads reduced to 3 groups. This meant the research was limited to a smaller sample in the project when meeting the leads which may impact on the reliability of the study as there was a less diverse sample (c.f Lammers, 2005). Reliability refers to consistency and research is considered high in reliability if it produces similar results. Since, the researcher was investigating processes involved in embedding evidence based practice across many schools would the 2 leads that left the study have given difference ideas on the processes?

Whilst Hargreaves’s (1996) state the need for ‘teaching as a research-based profession’ it was clear throughout the project that for the leads access to materials and research was problematic. Access to publications are often published behind journal ‘pay-walls’; or in relation to the format and language of research articles themselves (Hemsley-Brown, 2004; Bransford et al. 2009; Borg, 2010). Coupled with another key theme ‘teacher time constraints’ during the interviews was that teachers have little time especially the less experienced to research and read materials. Access to materials and ascertaining key pieces as well as time constraints may deter teachers to engage with evidence based practice. Furthermore, this potentially links to current assessments demonstrating that teachers do not read much research despite their potential interest in it (Williams and Coles, 2007).

SuccessesA key success of the project is that the projects were identified as ‘enabling schools to have opportunities and gain consistency across schools’. The impact on culture and outcomes would need to be measured across the school for future research, however, the literature does suggest consistency is key to driving improvement. For example, Luyten’s (1994) study in the Netherlands investigated 17 subjects across five years and concluded that 40 per cent of the school level variance was attributable to subject differences. Certainly a collaborative approach for the ‘Assessments without levels’ across the Alliance would enable greater opportunity for consistency and potentially improve students outcomes and reduce such variance.

Furthermore, another positive outcome from the study was that the leads ‘developed a core group’ and the core group had a positive attitude towards the projects. This potentially would lead to better outcomes for students. For example, linked to teacher attitudes, a study showed that within the context of a smoking prevention program, classrooms with teachers who had higher ratings on both positive attitudes (toward the program and their students) and preparedness had students with greater knowledge of and better decision-making skills about smoking (Botvin, Dusenbury, Baker, & James-Ortiz, 1989).

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Furthermore, not only could this core group potentially enhance student outcomes due to positive attitudes but the core group could start a ‘snowball effect’ (where something small gradually progresses into something significant). For example, research communities start small and then over time become larger. This was demonstrated in research by Moscovici, Lage, and Naffrechoux (1969) who showed that if a minority consistently stated that it saw as green a series of slides that were in fact blue, it influenced both the public and private responses of a majority. These results show

“conversion” behaviour, a gradual process of perceptual or cognitive modification

by which a person gives up their usual response to adopt another view or response, without clearly being aware of the change or forced to make it. Mead’s states this is, ‘a process by means of which the individual in interaction with others inevitably becomes like them in doing the same thing, without that process appearing in what we term consciousness: we become conscious of the process when we definitely take the attitude of the others, and this situation must be distinguished from the previous one’ (Mead, 1970, p. 193). It would be interesting to observe this potential minority influencing a majority with new projects as the research is clearly in its early stages to observe the potential ‘snowball effect’. Longitudinal research would be required to observe such phenomena. An example of this was identified by one of the project leads whereby it was stated that ‘the sharing of practice with key leads enabled a greater sharing by delivering to the staff in the whole school’.

Recommendations/ Next StepsA regular theme that arose was the need for facilitators/ leaders to be the drive behind evidence based practice within the Alliance. The facilitators/ leads would need to be behind the development of a research engaged culture. Belkohdja et al., (2007) identified that leadership is a factor associated with influencing organisations to engage with research and evidence. Hence, leaders could, through the professional development programme each teacher receives within school, allocate time for collaborative activity to enable discussions about initiatives which may enhance practice.

The need for collaborative activity was apparent and emphasised by the leads as ‘meeting and sharing with groups of like-minded people’ would enable the projects to progress. Leadership could enable through their professional development programmes such opportunities by providing choices for like-minded people to attend particular project groups. With staff motivated to attend such groups because of teacher choice in attending this could serve as an emotional contagion effect (positivity breads positivity). For example, Barsade et al (2002) found emotion contagion can enhance group cooperation. This in turn enhances positive affect and Barsade (2002) highlighted that teams with homogenous positive affect, has a beneficial influence on team relationships. For embedding evidence based practice there is a need for groups to expand within an alliance of 88 schools and allowing people choice in this manner may well be fruitful.

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Moreover, they live and work in a community where they come together in teams or groups engaged in a shared activity in a passionate quest for collective excellence. Each member of the school community shows evident enjoyment in the prowess of other members and while there is competition among peers, it’s a competitive edge that is tempered by the knowledge that they belong to a community which enjoys a magic of achievement shared by almost all.

Davies and Brighouse 2008: p14

As mentioned in the challenges above teachers tend to read little research (c.f. Williams and Cole, 2007). Therefore, the recommendation as highlighted in the focus groups being to give access to senior and middle leaders the research materials. The rationale behind this for the middle leaders and senior leaders to read and illicit practical ideas for the class teachers to use. The teachers could have an overview of the research but not necessarily seek to find the research and read the research in its entirety.

An emphasis through the focus groups, the diary and one to one interviews was on the need for evaluation of the projects themselves. As the school is an Alliance of 88 schools there is an opportunity for rigorous methods to be used to evaluate the impact. There are opportunities for example to use control school within the Alliance that are not embarking on such projects to measure the impact of projects by using the control schools as a baseline measure. Making links with researchers at Universities that are interested in educational research would be an effective step forward as they have the skills necessary to gather data. Hence a collaboration between the projects leads and university researchers would be recommended. For example, Goldacre (2013) has been a driver in a shift to draw attention to this agenda through calling for greater use of rigorous methods of gathering evidence in education. Therefore, a collaboration between the project leads and researchers at University would help serve this purpose.

Furthermore, researchers engaging with schools may encourage the staff to engage further with the interventions. For example, Jeanpierre et al., (2005) found the presence of researchers in schools influences the school culture to one where the expectation is that teachers are engaging in reflective and forward-looking practices that are based on evidence.

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The views expressed in this report are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department for Education.

Any enquiries regarding this publication should be sent to us at: college.research@education.gov.uk or www.education.gov.uk/contactus

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