Research paper

Transferring Learning and Taking Innovation to Scale

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This booklet is part of a national project, carried out by CUREE and commissioned by The Innovation Unit, that is exploring both research and practice. The project is bringing together the evidence from education research and an analysis of the approaches to transfer and going to scale currently in use by the key national education agencies in England in 2006-07. The aim is to develop a more widely shared understanding of existing practice and of the evidence base about transfer and scaling up of innovative and/or effective practice in education.

QCDA Building the Evidence Base Probe 1

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The research reported here was designed to explore the nature of  lassroom teachers’ assessment practices in schools considered to be innovative in relation to the curriculum and successful in achieving high attainment at Key Stage 2. The aim of the research was to provide evidence of the ways in which teachers’ understandings about learning and assessment shaped their pedagogy and approaches to the curriculum and n doing so help others to consider how they could develop their own practice. A case study approach was adopted so that detailed descriptions of current successful practice could be supported and rationalised by clearly articulated practitioner beliefs.

Wheatfield Report

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Wheatfield Primary School is a relatively new school of 420 pupils in a new town community which has little to offer young people. Many of our parents are educated to degree level and a high proportion are white collar workers. One of our six new themes, ‘Sharing the Planet’ was a completely fresh idea to all staff, so we set about creating a definitive set of aims for this strand, and ways of measuring its impact upon the children’s learning and attitudes. A trial of materials took place with the Year 2 children during the spring, with greater investigations taking place with the learners in Year 1, 4 and 5 during the summer term. All year groups have parallel classes, within each of which we identified five children who were not on track to make their target grades (L3 in Year 2 and L5 in Year 6).

QCDA Building the Evidence Base Review of Individual Studies from Systematic Research Reviews

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CUREE’s  first foray into mapping evidence relevant to QCA’s new and wide ranging curriculum framework took the form of a map of existing reviews of research . The results have enabled us to start to identify:

• the range and types of curriculum related research

• significant gaps in the research base

• emerging trends in research findings

63 research reviews were included in the map. Three main types of review were identified which were classified as • systematic – ie using a comprehensive search strategy, transparent inclusion criteria and a rigorous weighting of the evidence from which to synthesise across the studies• interpretive – ie using expert knowledge to identify studies, without a rigorous and transparent weighting of the evidence but with a synthesis• descriptive – ie an account of the research and the relative weight of evidence but with no synthesis

The overall findings from the review of reviews represented syntheses of research in several key areas whilst at the same time pointing to significant gaps in the evidence base.

EPPI Reviews - The impact of collaborative CPD on classroom teaching and learning

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'How does collaborative Continuing Professional Development ( CPD ), for teachers of the 5-16 age range, affect teaching and learning.'

June 2003.

Abstract/summary to be written.

CPD that has helped teachers to improve pupil behaviour.

Summary

An overview of an open national programme sponsored by the NUT, which aims to effectively tackle poor behaviour in schools. Teachers first attend a 24-hour residential, where they work with external tutors to learn peer coaching methods, and find ways of dealing with behavioural problems. Teachers then work in pairs in their schools, providing coaching based on structured observation and feedback over a period of fourteen weeks. A review residential provides a form of self-evaluation and the chance to appraise and build upon what teachers have learnt over the course. Making time for the peer coaching sessions and residentials proved to be the most problematic aspect of the programme. However, teachers on the whole agreed that the gains outweighed the costs, and teachers continued to support each other using and building on the methods they have learnt after the programme had finished. The NUT's peer coaching model is also used as a framework for a range of other CPD programmes.

Bringing Research Resources to Practitioner Users via Web Technology: Lessons Learned to date.

Summary Web resources for education , what's the problem?

Over the past few years there has been growing interest in making educational research more relevant to the concerns of consumers outside universities - in particular teachers. More and more schools and individual teachers are seeking to engage in and with research to inform their practice in a range of contexts, from classroom teaching strategies to leadership. Nowadays there is much more educational research on the web but is it accessible to teachers' What are the problems in finding relevant research through educational databases? Drawing on their experience of searching educational databases and on the results of a small scale informal survey of titles and abstracts a CUREE team explored a number of problems practitioners faced when trying to access educational research.