We are delighted to introduce William Emeny, Curriculum Leader and Head of Mathematics at Wyvern College in Southampton. William was the winner of the Pearson Teaching Awards ‘Teacher of the year in a secondary school’ in 2017. He has authored many publications including The Magic of Pineapples and has a wonderful maths blog. We are very pleased to hear his views on educational research. Welcome William.

How do you stay up to date with the latest education research?

I use the Research Gate website regularly, following the researchers and topics that I am particularly interested in so that I receive email notifications each time there are new relevant publications. I also download papers from the university bio web pages of researchers I am interested in [Note from editor: academic researchers are invariably happy to send research publications if you email them]. Furthermore, I read relevant books on cognitive science, evidence-based teaching etc.

Is it important to you whether the research uses particular methods?

I think there are a number of things which make research useful for teachers and methodology is certainly one of them. My view is that ideally there needs to be a combination of lab-based and classroom-based research.

The lab-based research should follow rigorous experimental design principles (controls, independent and dependent variables, avoiding bias, significance testing etc) to illustrate the impact of specific interventions. Classroom-based research should follow as good experimental design principles as possible without overly compromising the ecological validity benefits, e.g. ensuring the methods of delivery are sustainable in regular lessons in real-world schools etc. There are trade-offs between scientific rigour in experimental design and ecological validity when it comes to classroom-based research, but I see it as essential and complementary to the lab-based work.

It is the classroom-based research which helps teachers translate concepts from cognitive and neuroscience into classroom-based practical teaching strategies. Classroom-based research is also important for showing whether observed principles under controlled conditions in a psychology lab are resilient enough to have an impact in a school classroom environment!

Could you tell us how research has influenced your teaching?

There are two main areas whereby research has influenced my teaching. Firstly, I am very grateful to John Hattie for his ‘Visible Learning’ meta-analysis work in which he meticulously compiled effect size summaries of so many different influences which impact on student outcomes. After reading this work, I adopted Hattie’s “Know thy impact” mantra as much as possible in my teaching. A teacher’s most precious commodity is their time and it is essential that we focus our efforts on things which have the greatest impact on our students’ outcomes. By systematically and rigorously evaluating the impact of our teaching approaches, we can make informed decisions about how to teach most impactfully. Hattie’s “Know thy impact” mantra has led to me take an evaluative approach to any changes I make to my teaching practice. If I’m going to make a change, I first think about how I am going to measure and evaluate the impact the change has (or does not have!).  This avoids me going round in circles, trying things multiple times because I don’t know whether they were impactful or not.

Secondly, the research by the Bjorks, Roediger, Rohrer, Karpicke on retrieval, spacing and interleaving effects transformed my practice in recent years. I use retrieval-based teaching strategies regularly in lessons rather than getting students to re-read material. I realised the importance of planning for retention and transfer of learning, not just students’ understanding during first-teaching of an idea. I have built spacing and interleaving strategies into my teaching on a regular, habitual basis and have consequently measured considerable improvements in students’ outcomes.

Could you describe a research-informed idea that you feel has had a positive impact in your classroom?

I implemented distributed (spaced) practice into my teaching by ensuring that once an idea was first taught, I then deliberately planned in further practice opportunities on that topic in multiple future lessons. I also ensured further spaced practice opportunities by deliberately delaying end of unit assessments so they occurred 3 weeks after finishing teaching a topic.

Every maths teacher has experienced students understanding topics when they are taught during lessons, but then failing to remember them later. Learning is as much about building retention of knowledge as it is about acquiring the knowledge in the first place. Research into the Spacing Effect is very robust and the strategies I describe above were one interpretation I made of how to put the Spacing Effect into practice in my classroom.

The impact has been significant with students’ summative assessment scores rising at least twice the previous rate, on average. They are remembering more of what is taught as they go, rather than getting to the end of the course and needing to be retaught so much content.

What do you think researchers should focus on next (i.e. what are the gaps in our understanding)?

The body of research on the Retrieval, Spacing and Interleaving Effects is considerable, but in general it is lab-based studies. There are many challenges that teachers face in order to translate lab-based observed effects into practical sustainable teaching strategies in real-world classrooms. For example, we know we should space out the practice students get on maths problems in order to boost their retention, but what would a good spacing interval be? How many times should they revisit a topic? Do some students need more revisits than others before their learning is retained? Should I space exercises out right from the start or is it OK for students to do some massed practice of a single topic at the beginning of learning that topic? How many exercises should they complete in each practice sessions? Does the number of exercises vary with different types of content? How can I measure whether this approach is working?

These questions cannot be answered with lab-based research; we need classroom-based research that focuses on different approaches to implementing these ideas and measuring their relative impact. Effective classroom-based studies can then be used as case studies for teachers to learn from and to see directly how they can implement these approaches in their own classrooms.

Do you have any suggestions for how communication and collaboration could be improved between teachers and education researchers?

Yes, certainly! Firstly, I believe it is important that people ‘with a foot’ in both the academic and school worlds are identified and empowered to set up collaborative relationships. These could be teachers who are keen to learn experimental methodologies etc and want to conduct classroom-based research, or it could be educational researchers with a particular interest in understanding how to implement impactful practice in real-world classrooms. These people need skillsets and credibility ‘in both camps’, i.e. some teaching experience coupled with some post-graduate training in experimental methodologies. Let’s call them “Teacher-Researchers”. They could talk both the language of the academic and the school-based worlds and be credible and relatable to both teachers and researchers.

The next step would be to empower the Teacher-Researchers with support from Educational Researchers in terms of designing their studies, and from schools who will allow time and resource to conduct the studies in their classrooms. Success hinges on relationships and the Teacher-Researchers need time (and funding) in order to develop and sustain these relationships so they are genuinely mutually beneficial.

The Teacher-Researchers could improve communication in both directions by sharing with Educational Researchers the realities, challenges and opportunities of what is possible in real-world classrooms through the eyes of teachers, and then with the teachers important findings from the academic world about potential effective practices and how to evaluate impact rigorously through the eyes of the Educational Researchers. The Teacher-Researchers are the interface between both worlds with experience and understanding of both.

On a personal note, I intend to focus my career on the Teacher-Researcher role. It doesn’t exist, to my knowledge, yet. I am focusing at the moment on trying to gain research funding to allow me time to adopt this role on a part-time basis and to then demonstrate how impactful collaboration could result from it.

You can follow William on twitter @Maths_Master. Do also check out his great maths blog Great Maths Teaching Ideas and the links including in this blog (particularly the Bjork Learning and Forgetting Lab) for many useful videos and practical teaching suggestions.

Mark is a key stage 3 geography teacher, Head of Geography, and Research Lead at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex. He tweets @EnserMark and blogs at www.teachreal.wordpress.com.
His first book, Making Every Geography Lesson Count, is soon to be published by Crown House.

Mark, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Firstly, how do you keep up-to-date with the latest education research?

It is very difficult to keep up to date as there is so much being produced and so much of variable quality and of variable practical use. I am a member of The Chartered College of Teachers and have found Impact to be very useful and the access to academic articles online invaluable.

I also attend education conference such as ResearchEd and read books on education. I follow up the references in footnotes and check out the original research for myself. I also make use of the EEF toolkit and again follow up by reading the research they have used. TES (formally Times Educational Supplement) are also running more and more articles about education research and Jon Severs Pedagogy Podcast in which he interviews academics is excellent.

Is it important to you whether the research uses particular methods (eg neuroscience, classroom-based)?

I need to be able to see an application for the research in a classroom setting but this doesn’t mean the research has to have come from a classroom. I think findings from neuroscience can be very useful to teachers and it is something I wish my training and early-career CPD had focused on more.

Could you tell us how research has influenced your teaching?

The main way that research has influenced by teaching is to simplify what I do. It has allowed me to cut out a lot of the complications that made my teaching less effective and efficient. I no longer try to plan activities to take into account different learning styles or try to differentiate learning objectives. I started to teach at a time in the early 00’s when it felt that a lot of what we did in the classroom was done to please various outside observers and to meet their criteria for what a good lesson would look like. Reading research has given me the ability and confidence to strip away a lot of the bad practice I was trained in.

Reading and applying research has helped me to make my explanations more memorable and I use principles of dual coding to help support working memory. I also use more structured retrieval practice to make sure that pupils are recalling material from much earlier in the course and not assuming that because they have done it they have learnt it.

What do you think researchers should focus on next (i.e. what are the gaps in our understanding, from a teacher’s perspective)?

I would be interested in seeing more research into high and low achieving pupils and understanding more about the difference. When does the gap between them begin, what causes it, and what can be done to close it?

I would also like to see more work done on the transition between key stages. It feels as though a lot of what was learnt at primary school is unavailable to pupils when they arrive in a new setting. I hear from teachers in further and higher education that much is the same for pupils leaving secondary school. I think anything that can improve retention between schools could lead to a dramatic improvement in education. We just need to know what those thing are!

Do you have any suggestions of how communication and collaboration could be improved between teachers and education researchers?

The first issue is access. Too much research is expensive to access. If we want an informed profession it needs to be free to teachers.

Secondly, we need to find a way of bringing useful research into schools. There is a huge amount out there and teachers at the chalk face don’t have the time to sift through it and search for the pearls. Research leads in schools can help with this as they can be given the time and space to do this searching and disseminating. It would be useful if researchers can get access to the contact details of research leads to improve communication.

Thirdly, teachers need to be given time for this communication and collaboration with researchers. A teacher’s time is expensive and with crushing real time funding cuts coming from central government it is hard to see how many schools are going to manage to give staff the time to sit and read and discuss.

It would be useful if education researchers got on Twitter and started blogging and discussing their work informally with teachers. Although they may initially be talking to a small group of the profession, it will help to get their work out there more widely.

Please could you describe a research-informed idea that you feel has had a positive impact in your classroom, so that others could try it as well if they feel it’s relevant?

Retrieval practice has made a huge difference to my pupil’s ability to retain information to use. I usually start a lesson with a short quiz and ensure that the questions go back over several previous topic. This means that pupils are having to think back and bring something back into their working memory, making recall in the future easier. However, I also make sure that the questions relate to the work they are about to do. This helps to make this new learning’s place in their schema more explicit and helps to avoid the misconceptions that arise when new learning is de-coupled from what has gone before.

Although I keep the quizzes low stakes, I do go through the questions and ask for a hand-up for who got that question right. I allows me to quickly ascertain any gaps in their knowledge and anything that might need re-teaching before I move on.

Thank you very much for your time!

Welcome to our blog series where we chat to teachers about their experiences of accessing and using research. We are delighted to introduce Charlotte Hindley who is an assistant head and teacher from Platt Bridge Community School, and delivers professional development programmes both in the UK and internationally. Charlotte also works as part of her local Teaching School Alliance, Westbridge, in a role co-leading Research and Development. Here, she talks about her experiences of using research in the primary setting.

Thank you Charlotte for taking the time to answer our questions. Firstly, how do you keep up-to-date with the latest education research? Is it important to you whether the research uses particular methods (e.g. neuroscience, classroom-based)?

I keep up to date with developments on the EEF website (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk), and the Impact magazine from Chartered College of Teaching and Learning (https://chartered.college/journal). Regarding the type of research – neuroscience is a relatively new concept for me, so previously I would have been more interested if the research was classroom-based as I felt this held more accountability for pupils’ progress rather than those that were commercially-led e.g. testing a specific company’s product. Also personally taking part in National Teacher-led research into ‘Closing the Gap’ and more recently Neuroscience-informed teaching (using randomised control trials, or RCTs) enables me to use my own research.

Could you tell us how research has influenced your teaching?

RCTs that we have led on have informed our teaching – we now use weekly spelling tests, as our own controlled trial showed this had a positive impact on pupils’ recall of their spellings. We also explored the use of multiple choice testing as a learning event which showed us that this is useful in conjunction with another method. We also use ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’, based on RCTs led by other teachers. We have implemented interventions that involve 1:1 tuition and done smaller group/1:1 tuition rather than traditional whole class boosters for Y6 SATS based on EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

How do you tell if something is working in the classroom?

Impact on pupils’ progress (progress scores based on end of KS1 standardised scaled scores).
Scores on tests (attainment scores); pupil voice and feedback.
Feedback from teachers – teacher voice.
Observations of classroom practice.

What do you think researchers should focus on next (i.e. what are the gaps in our understanding, from a teacher’s perspective)?

Vocabulary gap in young children (Early Years/KS1) particularly in disadvantaged pupils e.g. not much conversation at home. What interventions could be in place to help accelerate vocabulary learning? Would supporting parents at home at an early stage with vocabulary and language acquisition be helpful? How can we narrow the gap between vocabulary of disadvantaged and other pupils?

How can we improve reading engagement and focus? Parental support and engagement with this?

Memory and recall linked to key facts e.g. times tables facts and spellings.

Do you have any suggestions of how communication and collaboration can be improved between teachers and education researchers?

Involve teachers more in the design process rather than emailing them to be part of an existing trial that doesn’t necessarily link to their School Improvement Plan and targets for improvement.

Support teachers in leading their own research. Establish partnerships between PhD students/universities to support teachers with the design or analysis process.

If you could share one piece of advice about research-informed practice with other teachers and trainee teachers, what would it be?

See the value of it – it is not just an add on but can inform your practice IF you tailor it to link to your pupils’ needs, your classroom gaps, and school improvement plan priorities.

Please could you describe a research-informed idea that you feel has had a positive impact in your classroom, so that others could try it as well if they feel it’s relevant. (e.g. Why did you introduce the idea? What did you do? What impact has it had?)

Our main research has involved exploring the teaching of spelling and how best to ensure pupils can recall spellings. We have carried out 2 RCTs in this field:

• The use of testing as a learning event helps pupils recall spellings.

Two groups of pupils in Y6 in 2 schools (replicated in Y4) were involved, where one group of pupils did normal classroom practice for learning spellings (control), and the other group were told they would have a test at the end of the week on them too (intervention).

The group who were told they would have a test as part of their learning had greater gains in their scores.

• The use of multiple choice testing as a learning event (based on retrieval practices from Neuroscience for Teachers textbook).

Three groups of pupils from Y6 from two schools (120 pupils), completed a pre-test of 30 words (split into three groups of 10). Each group used a different method for learning spellings and all groups experienced each condition in a different order:

Control – Look Cover Write Check method (normal classroom practice)
Intervention 1 – Multiple choice testing as a learning event
Intervention 2 – Combining both conditions (L,C,W,C and Multiple choice tests)
Post-test in each condition.

Impact: Although all groups improved their scores, Intervention 2 was more effective than both Intervention 1 and Control. Control was more effective than Intervention 1. Children preferred using multiple choice testing than other method.

As a result: We use weekly testing in every class throughout school, and we use multiple choice testing in addition to other methods but not to replace existing practice (it enhances but can’t replace).

Thank you Charlotte for your time!