Investigation into How Best to Disseminate Research Evidence to Teachers

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed world-wide recognition of the value of using research evidence in education contexts. However, despite extensive efforts and progress made to date, teachers’ use of research evidence in practice remains limited in the majority of countries, including the UK. Consequently, there has been a surge of interest in how best to promote teachers’ use of research evidence in schools. In particular, the issue of how to effectively disseminate research evidence to educators to facilitate the utilisation of research evidence has received considerable attention in recent years. Although the literature is replete with suggestions on various routes of dissemination, insufficient attention has been directed towards causal evidence concerning how to best disseminate research evidence to teachers.

Therefore, this study set out to investigate how to resolve this challenge by evaluating a promising dissemination approach to getting evidence into use in schools. The study first considered existing evidence on the most effective ways of disseminating research evidence to teachers. To achieve this, a large-scale systematic review was conducted. The review initially identified 68,817 records, 24 of which were eventually included in the analysis. However, only a few studies in the review generated high-quality evidence. Descriptive and narrative analyses were performed to present the findings. The results from the review support the rationale of the current study, and demonstrate a lack of robust research evidence on the various approaches for disseminating research evidence to teachers. The review findings indicated that passive dissemination approaches, such as simply making research summaries and evidence-based resources available to teachers, were not an effective means to get evidence into use and improve student attainment. Compared to other approaches in the review, embedding evidence in the curriculum, technology-supported routes and active multi-component approaches were found to be more promising.

For the impact evaluation component of the study, workshop training with supporting evidence-based resources, classified as an active multi-component dissemination approach in the review, was chosen as an intervention to disseminate research evidence to teachers. A randomised controlled trial (RCT) was conducted to investigate the impact of this intervention on teachers’ attitudes towards research evidence, and their use of research evidence in practice. The researcher recruited nine primary schools located in England, to be randomly allocated for the treatment (n=4) and a control group (n=5). A total of 46 teachers (treatment 25, control 21) from these schools participated in the evaluation at the outset. Data was collected via a pre- and post-survey consisting of 15 questions regarding attitudes and 18 questions regarding research use. The survey also involved additional questions about the teachers’ demographic characteristics to ascertain whether the results differed by subgroup. All teachers (n=46) completed a pre-survey at the outset. The evaluation was then unexpectedly subject to considerable dropout between the pre-survey and post-survey phases due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Of the original 46 teachers, 25 completed both the pre- and post-surveys. Therefore, readers should interpret the trial results with caution, particularly in relation to the subgroups. The data from the pre-post survey was analysed item by item. The study presented gain scores for each item, based on changes in the pre- to post-survey mean scores. The differences in the changes between the treatment and control groups are shown as effect sizes.

The study also examined teachers’ attitudes towards research evidence, and their (self-reported) use of research evidence in practice prior to the intervention. Analysis of the pre-survey results was undertaken for all 46 teachers. The results from the pre-survey demonstrated that although teachers’ general attitudes towards research evidence may be considered positive, their (self-reported) use of research evidence was comparatively limited. The results provided by the subgroups indicated that headteachers/principals were more likely than classroom teachers to report using research evidence in schools in all areas.

The results of the impact evaluation were not encouraging in terms of teachers’ attitudes towards research evidence. After the treatment, teachers made positive improvements in their (self-reported) use of research in some respects. From an overall perspective, however, there was no convincing evidence of any beneficial impact on teachers (self-reported) use of research evidence following the intervention. The training undertaken by the intervention groups emphasised the importance of judging the quality of research evidence, which may have led the teachers to be increasingly sceptical of all research evidence, rather than encouraging discrimination between robust and weak evidence. The training might be better on how to use robust research evidence rather than how to identify it. The intervention approach should ideally be evaluated by further studies involving a large-scale RCT, with lower dropout.

The results of the impact evaluation among the small subgroups were found to be mixed. However, the results by experience and age were stronger, compared to the other subgroups. The intervention improved less experienced teachers’ attitudes towards research evidence in some respects. In terms of research use, the intervention had a bigger harmful, or less beneficial impact on older teachers than younger teachers in most respects. This shows that the effectiveness of a dissemination approach may differ according to teachers’ demographic characteristics. Given this finding, and the pre-survey results indicating that teachers’ use of research evidence in practice may differ according to subgroups, researchers and educators should account for teachers’ demographic characteristics more than happens currently, while addressing issues in evidence-based practice.

Overall, there is a need for further research on how best to disseminate research evidence to teachers. Further studies may benefit from the findings of the current study, particularly the systematic review. They should test the effectiveness of the following dissemination approaches: embedding evidence in curriculum, technology-supported routes, and active multi-component approaches.

In conclusion, this thesis demonstrates that educators should be aware that getting research evidence into use is not a straightforward process. Research providers and funders should focus on more comprehensive and advanced dissemination approaches, such as embedding evidence into curriculum and technology-supported routes. Educators may also address whether we can reasonably ask teachers to judge the quality of the research evidence provided. Teachers may instead be given evidence whose quality has already been judged, perhaps by research centres or intermediates, and found to be robust, and then implement these.