Joanne Gleeson, Lucas Walsh, Mark Rickinson, Blake Cutler and Genevieve Hall
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Quality use of research evidence: practitioner perspectives’.
The use of research to inform practice can play a vital role in improving decision-making and social outcomes. As such, research use has gained widespread attention, with a range of initiatives now in place across sectors, countries and jurisdictions that promote it. Yet, what it takes for research to be used on the ground, let alone what quality research use looks like, is not well understood (Sheldrick et al., 2022). Without these understandings, there are real risks that research into research use will stay, as Tseng (2022) suggests, on ‘the proverbial shelf (or website) — far from the action of policy deliberations and decision-making’. This presents a challenge to the research community; to not only gain robust evidence on how research is used by practitioners, but also what it means to use research well and what it takes for it to improve.
In our new article in Evidence and Policy, we address this challenge by presenting findings from an investigation into Australian educators’ views on using research well in practice. Utilising thematic analysis, we draw on survey and interview data from almost 500 Australian educators (i.e., school leaders, teachers and support staff) to examine their perspectives in relation to a previously developed conceptual Quality Use of Research Evidence (QURE) Framework (Rickinson et al., 2020, 2022).
Overall, we made two key findings. Firstly, we found considerable alignment between educators’ views and our framework, with all components (i.e., skillsets, mindsets, relationships, leadership, culture, infrastructure) except one (i.e., system influences) featuring strongly within the interview data, and most components featuring moderately or strongly within the survey data. These findings led us to conclude that the QURE Framework has empirical validity as a way of framing and conceptualising quality research use.
Secondly, we gained new insights into quality research use in practice, with educators’ views helping to elaborate or unpack certain aspects, or emphasise the importance of particular components. These types of insights from educators can help to inform efforts to improve research use. For example, when describing effective ‘infrastructure’, educators pinpointed specific settings and processes (e.g., staff meetings, leadership teams, improvement cycles), as well as supports (e.g., access to curated research, professional learning) that helped them to improve their research use. As another example, educators’ frequent references to the core components of ‘thoughtful engagement and implementation’ and ‘appropriate research evidence’ and the enabling components of ‘skillsets’ and ‘leadership’ suggest that these are well-recognised aspects of using research well and potentially productive starting points for capacity building initiatives with, and by, practitioners. Such initiatives within schools might include collaborative discussions and professional learning amongst leaders about what leadership behaviours need to be role-modelled in schools and what communication strategies need to be actioned to promote and encourage others to use research well. Other initiatives might include broader school community discussions and reviews of research use-related skills and how skill development may be linked to school and individual performance planning processes.
While the study is focused on educational practice in Australia, we believe our findings have application to other sectors, jurisdictions and countries. As such, we also believe our QURE Framework and insights gained help to build global knowledge about what is involved in using research well in practice, and provide important considerations about the productive system spaces where improvement efforts by practitioners and policymakers can be directed.
Image credit: iStock.com/SDI Productions
Joanne Gleeson, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Joanne Gleeson is a Senior Research Fellow with the Monash Q Project in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Joanne draws from cross-sectoral professional experience in executive human resource management, business consulting, careers counselling, education and education research. Her research is focused on educational evidence use, and improving adolescents’ career identity, employability and education-work transitions. Joanne is on Twitter: @dr_gleeson
Lucas Walsh, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Lucas Walsh is a Professor of Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies, in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He is currently a chief investigator on the Monash Q Project and Director of the Monash Centre for Youth Policy & Education. Lucas has served as Associate Dean (Berwick), Associate Dean (Academic Staff), Deputy Dean and Interim Dean of the Faculty of Education. He has worked in corporate, government and not-for-profit sectors. Recent books include: Imagining Youth Futures: University Students in Post-Truth Times (Springer, with Rosalyn Black), and Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift (Palgrave Macmillan with Amanda Third, Philippa Collin, and Rosalyn Black). Lucas is on Twitter: @ProfLucasWalsh
Mark Rickinson, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Mark Rickinson is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His work is focused on understanding and improving the use of research in education. He is currently leading the Monash Q Project, a five-year initiative with the Paul Ramsay Foundation to improve the use of research evidence in Australian schools. Mark also leads and teaches graduate-level courses at Monash on ‘Using and Evaluating Research Evidence’. Mark is on Twitter: @mark_rickinson
Blake Cutler, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Blake Cutler is a PhD student and Research Assistant with the Monash Q Project in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. His doctoral studies are focused on how the quality use of research can address issues of social inequity for queer people in Australian schools. Prior to joining the Monash Q Project, Blake was an experienced music teacher across primary, secondary, and instrumental settings. Blake is on Twitter: @blakeacutler
Genevieve Hall, Faculty of Education, Monash University
Genevieveis an experienced teacher, teacher educator and professional learning expert. Her previous roles include working as an Education Consultant for the Asia Education Foundation at the University of Melbourne on designing, implementing and evaluating professional learning programs for teachers and school leaders. She has also worked as a Lecturer and Curriculum Lead at RMIT University and a Teaching Associate at Monash University where she has educated pre-service teachers about current learning theories and pedagogies to prepare them to meet the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers through evidence informed practice.
Learn more about the Monash Q Project
Join the Twitter Conversation: @MonashQProject
Readers are encouraged to connect with the Q Project and be part of strategic dialogue and system-level change around research evidence use in Australian education.
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Gleeson, J. Rickinson, M. Walsh, L. Cutler, B. Salisbury, M. Hall, G. and Khong, H. (2023). Quality use of research evidence: practitioner perspectives. Evidence & Policy, DOI: 10.1332/174426421X16778434724277. OPEN ACCESS
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