In this series of 10 short blogs – which will issue in rapid succession – I will consider in turn the top themes that have emerged from 60 interviews with teachers, leaders, policy-makers, academics and others from across and beyond the English FE system. Each blog will end with a question which I hope will generate debate on LinkedIn, where the blogs are signposted.
The core question considered has been “what might be the features of a self-improving FE system?” Interviewees have also considered the key features of the FE system as it stands, and what is holding it back from being self-improving.
A theme which came through early in my interviews, faded, and then had a resurgence in the later interviews was that of bringing together research and practice. It was a theme that was most popular with those closest to the student interface, but also cropped up occasionally in the thinking of both academics and officials. It was largely missing from the narratives of senior leaders in the field, which is perhaps an interesting and notable absence.
The contention here is that in a self-improving system there would be an excellent feedback loop between educational research and teaching practice. That is to say, teachers would be well aware of latest research and would put it to use, and conversely researchers would be investigating themes and questions that practitioners wanted elucidation and exploration of.
Some interviewees contrasted this with what they saw as the present situation, where there was a big gulf between research and practice. They variously described FE teaching as being a “research-free zone” (comparatively) and/or FE research as being about “answering the questions that nobody is asking”.
There has been in recent years a growing interest in the interplay between research and practice. However the emphasis has been very different in different parts of the system. DfE sees the link as being one-way traffic: researchers should discover the “best way of doing things” and then teachers should follow this. They focus on research methods such as large scale randomised control trials which they believe will create topic-specific manuals that teachers can use to improve outcomes. This position is underpinned by a belief that there are objectively more and less effective teaching practices and that effective practices, once identified, can be adopted universally.
Teachers with an interest in research, however, tend to approach the topic from the other end, with a lively interest in ‘practitioner research’ – whereby teachers learn the fundamentals of research practice and get involved in research in their own contexts with their own students and colleagues. This position is underpinned by a belief that teaching is essentially contextual and dialogic, and tends to explicitly reject the concept of ‘one best way’.
There is a lot to be said about this debate; but for now the crucial thing to note is that the common view amongst my interviewees who mentioned it was that a tight loop and regular dialogue between research and teaching would be an essential feature of a self-improving system. It would create a ‘joy loop’ of ever-improving system effectiveness, because areas of relevance to student outcomes would be continually researched and the insights from that research would then be read, understood, tested, adopted and adapted by the teaching profession.
Question: This seems to be an obviously good idea, and a powerful way to create a self-improving system. It also does not seem expensive. So why does it not happen?
David Russell
Executive in Residence at Oxford Saïd Business School
Education and Training Foundation