Sustaining Teachers' Research Engagement: The Role of a Research Champion Within a University-School Partnership

• In Event: School Improvement Through Research Engagement in Different Contexts

Abstract

Objective
This paper presents a detailed case-study of one school’s experience of a university-school partnership established to support effective knowledge exchange.

Perspectives
In England, the call for research engagement to be seen as central to teachers’ professional practice has been made both by organisations such as the British Educational Research Association (2014), and by teachers themselves through the recently established Chartered College of Teaching and grassroots initiatives such as ResearchEd (researched.org.uk). In 2013, one research-intensive university and its local partnership schools demonstrated their commitment to this agenda by incorporating two new strands of work into their long-standing collaborative work, previously concerned solely with preservice teacher education): (1) a focus on sustaining research engagement within early career teachers’ professional learning: and (2) a commitment to knowledge exchange through various kinds of research collaboration. An essential feature of the partnership was the role of Research Champion: a designated teacher in each partnership school, acting as a channel between school and university, facilitating collaborative research and promoting teachers’ research engagement through a range of specific programmes and structured initiatives to support them in accessing, interpreting, using and conducting research.

Mode of enquiry
This paper¸ co-authored by a university-based coordinator of the new partnership and a school-based Research Champion, presents a detailed case-study of one partnership school, examining how – and how far – engagement in and with research was systematically embedded within the school’s professional development and school improvement policies.

Data sources
The paper is based on three data sources (collected with the approval of the University’s Research Ethics Committee): (i) Working documents representing successive iterations of the university-school relationship and changing conceptions of the Research Champion’s role over the past six years; (ii) Eight interviews conducted with teachers five years after the new partnership had been launched, reflecting the perspectives of the Research Champion herself, other members of the senior leadership team, heads of subject departments and main-scale teachers. (iii) A series of ten structured journal entries, compiled over the course of the academic year 2019-20, recording brief details of specific instances of the Research Champion’s work.

Results
Analysis shows: (1) the way in which the partnership evolved, particularly as the university learned how to focus its efforts to promote effective collaboration; (2) the extent to which the Research Champion’s particular position within the school influenced the ways in which she could operate; (3) the power of the systematic approach adopted by the school to embedding engagement in and with research within its development plan; (4) how the Research Champion succeeded in combining this ‘top-down’ strategy with a ‘bottom-up’ approach that allowed scope for teachers to address their personal priorities (which ranged from improving student attendance to pupil grouping policies in mathematics lessons),while facilitating school-wide transformation (particularly in relation to the promotion of student self-regulation).

Significance
The case-study provides a rich, detailed account of important factors that make possible a powerful form of university-school collaboration, through which valuable outcomes (not least professional learning and pupil achievement) can be secured for all stakeholders.

Authors

• Katharine Burn, University of Oxford

• Eluned Harries, Matthew Arnold School