Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts
1. The British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Commerce and Manufacturing (RSA) are jointly conducting a UK-wide Inquiry on Research and Teacher Education, focusing on the relationship between research, teacher education and school improvement. Launched earlier this year, the BERA-RSA Inquiry will produce an interim report in September 2013 and present its final conclusions and recommendations in early 2014.
2. At a time when teacher education is under active development across the four nations of the United Kingdom, the BERA-RSA Inquiry is examining the impact of recent changes, including the introduction from 2011 of the School Direct programme in England. As part of the Inquiry process, a number of papers have been commissioned from academic experts in the field to review policy and practice on teacher education in different parts of the UK and internationally, and to consider the specific contribution that research can make to developing teachers’ professional learning, expertise and judgement at each stage of their career.
3. The BERA-RSA Inquiry builds on existing evidence that research-based knowledge is an important component of initial teacher education (ITE), in helping to prepare student teachers for the complex demands of teaching. As the Select Committee recognised in its “Great Teachers” report (2012), the evidence from high-performing education systems, such as Finland and Singapore, demonstrates that successful ITE programmes are characterised by a partnership between schools and universities offering significant school experience combined with theoretical and research elements.1 Experts in professional development believe that this combination of research skills and knowledge, theoretical understanding and practical experience is crucial, because teachers need an understanding of the principles and rationale behind different types of practice (knowing why it works and what might work, rather than simply what works) in order to learn from successful interventions elsewhere and apply those lessons to their own teaching.2
4. Furthermore, as the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, recently observed, teachers and headteachers need a clear understanding of the types of continuing professional development (CPD) activity that have been shown to have the greatest positive impact on improving quality, including collaborative professional development, enquiry-based research, reflective practice, and peer-support mechanisms such as coaching and mentoring.3 These elements of CPD are not divorced from ITE, which lays the foundation for teachers’ professional skills, knowledge, outlook and dispositions. In evaluating student placements within programmes of initial teacher education, including School Direct, it follows that attention should be paid to the extent to which these elements are evident in the culture, principles and practice of the schools concerned.
5. In addition, it is worth considering how far the different models of ITE in England contribute to strengthening knowledge mobilisation across the system as a whole. As Carol Campbell and Ben Levin of the University of Toronto recently argued, while England has become a front-runner over recent years in demands to make research more useful and usable for education practice and policy, less attention has been paid to building research capacity within institutions and removing obstacles to engaging in and with research.4 To create a system which is geared towards mobilising and sharing knowledge about how to improve teaching quality and hence improve student outcomes, models of initial teacher education are needed which equip teachers and future leaders with the skills, knowledge and understanding to be able not just to locate relevant research, but to assess, interpret and apply the findings from research in the context of their own schools.
6. These dimensions of research capacity are not strongly reflected either in the latest draft of the Teachers’ Standards that apply across all routes of initial teacher training (university-led, school-centred and employment based). Although the 2012 Standards set an expectation that beginning teachers will, “demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how pupils learn and how this impacts on teaching”, the principal focus is on possession of “good subject and curriculum knowledge”; and in contrast to Scotland and Northern Ireland, there are no expectations that early career teachers will engage in research or critical enquiry.5
7. Thus, while high quality provision can be found within all existing routes into teaching, we would urge the Select Committee to monitor the extent to which each route contributes to stronger knowledge mobilisation across the entire system, as well as considering what the overall effect of recent and planned changes is likely to be. In the case of School Direct, there are concerns within University Departments of Education that the shift to school-centred routes will have negative effects on research capacity, by destabilising staff and diminishing funding streams for applied research.6 Careful attention therefore needs to be paid to the consequences, intended or otherwise, of changes in provision, in order to ensure the viability of high quality provision based upon school and university partnerships over the medium to longer term.
References
1 House of Commons Education Committee (2012). Great teachers: attracting, training and retaining the best: Ninth Report of Session 2010–12, Volume I.
2 Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) (2006). Harnessing knowledge to practice: accessing and using evidence from research, CUREE and Innovation Unit, p. 34.
3 Gove, M (2012). Follow up letter from Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education in relation to questions raised by the Committee on the Government response to the Committees Great Teacher report.
4 Campbell, C and Levin, B (2012). Developing Knowledge Mobilisation to Challenge Educational Disadvantage and Inform Effective Practices in England: Discussion Paper, University of Toronto, November 2012.
5 Department for Education (2013). Teachers’ Standards.
6 Christie, D, Donoghue, M, Kirk, G, McNamara, M, Menter, I, Moss, G, Noble-Rogers, J, Oancea, A, Rogers, C, Thomson, P & Whitty, G (2012). BERA-UCET Working Group on Education Research: Prospects for Education Research in Education Departments in Higher Education Institutions in the UK.
July 2013