Teachers' approaches to finding and using research evidence: an information literacy perspective

Background The use of research evidence produced by others is seen as central to the reflective practice of school teachers. There have been many recent UK initiatives aimed at improving access to research evidence, but there are still concerns about the lack of engagement by teachers. Previous research has looked at this issue from different perspectives, including the content and relevance of educational research, the relationships between researchers and teachers, accessibility and presentation of research and the culture of the school. The research presented here seeks to make a contribution to understanding the diffusion of research in the teaching profession by examining the issues from an information literacy perspective.

Purpose This paper examines the use of research information by UK school teachers, placing an emphasis on their information literacy—i.e. teachers' strategies and confidence in their abilities to find, evaluate and use research information, which is defined as the published output of a planned piece of research.

Sample Survey data were collected from 312 teachers and 78 head teachers from nursery, primary and secondary schools in Scotland, England and Wales. The sample included a wide range of teaching experience, ages, subject responsibilities, school locations and sizes, although there was a bias towards teachers who were motivated to use research evidence. Interviews were conducted with 28 teachers from primary, secondary, nursery and special education schools, and a further 15 teachers took part in group exercises. Interview and group exercise samples were more varied in their levels of research involvement.

Design and methods A mixed methodology was used. The questionnaire survey sought background data on more general attitudes towards research, as well as data on information access and confidence in finding and using general and research information. This was supplemented by qualitative evidence on information strategies and experiences from scenario or vignette interviews. Group exercises in which teachers discussed their responses to specific examples of research information were useful in focusing on strategies for evaluating information.

Results While survey respondents were, on balance, positively motivated towards the use of research evidence, their actual use of information from research was limited. They considered the most prominent barriers to their use of research information were associated with lack of time and lack of ready access to sources. This is likely to be a limiting factor in terms of the development of teacher confidence in finding, evaluating and using the kinds of information sources which are increasingly available to support their professional development. In fact survey evidence from the more research-motivated sample indicated that teachers were considerably less confident in finding and using research information than general information. Their confidence was slightly higher in finding research information (e.g. 67.1% and 60.9% were either confident or very confident in defining information needs and locating information respectively) compared to using research information (for example, 56.5% were either confident or very confident in organizing and synthesizing information). However, evidence from the more mixed interview and group exercise samples also revealed a range of concerns about lack of skills and knowledge needed to search and evaluate information effectively.

Conclusions The findings suggest that information literacy may be a factor in limiting the use of research information, exacerbating the perceived challenges of lack of time and lack of ready access to information sources. From an information perspective, teachers' use of research evidence is likely to be enhanced by greater development of information literacy; more attention to local information dissemination strategies; and the development of an information culture and ethos within schools.     

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Conceptions and Beliefs About “Good Teaching”: An integration of contrasting research areas

Previous research on conceptions of teaching comes from three distinct areas. The first is based on interviews with students and staff in higher education, the second involves the investigation of the conceptions and beliefs of schoolteachers, while the third derives from more general consideration of the nature of conceptions themselves. The empirical study reported here drew on these differing research areas to distinguish between beliefs and conceptions about good teaching and to explore their possible origins. The data came from student teachers, but the findings contribute to current thinking about conceptions of teaching in higher education. Bringing the empirical findings together with the three areas of previous research enables a more complete concept map to be drawn to summarise what may underlie the notion of “good teaching”.     

Traditional education and methods of access: Transcripting extrainstitutional education

Innovative Higher Education - The evaluation of training and education sponsored by the Armed Forces, business, and industry as well as prior learning assessment has been systematically...     

How Team Interlock Ecosystems Shape the Assembly of Scientific Teams: A Hypergraph Approach

ABSTRACT

Today’s most pressing scientific problems necessitate scientific teamwork; the increasing complexity and specialization of knowledge render “lone geniuses” ill-equipped to make high-impact scientific breakthroughs. Social network research has begun to explore the factors that promote the assembly of scientific teams. However, this work has been limited by network approaches centered conceptually and analytically on “nodes as people,” or “nodes as teams.” In this article, we develop a “team-interlock ecosystem” conceptualization of collaborative environments within which new scientific teams, or other creative team-based enterprises, assemble. Team interlock ecosystems comprise teams linked to one another through overlapping memberships and/or overlapping knowledge domains. They depict teams, people, and knowledge sets as nodes, and thus, present both conceptual advantages as well as methodological challenges. Conceptually, team interlock ecosystems invite novel questions about how the structural characteristics of embedding ecosystems serve as the primordial soup from which new teams assemble. Methodologically, however, studying ecosystems requires the use of more advanced analytics that correspond to the inherently multilevel phenomenon of scientists nested within multiple teams. To address these methodological challenges, we advance the use of hypergraph methodologies combined with bibliometric data and simulation-based approaches to test hypotheses related to the ecosystem drivers of team assembly.