What are we doing? Is it working? What’s next?
These are questions we often ask ourselves in the classroom; we want to make sure we are doing the very best possible for our learners.
Increasingly, research is something we look to for help with these questions, but frustratingly, the solutions it provides can sometimes feel out of reach, as the research to practice gap is just too big to cross.
From a researcher’s perspective, a clear goal of language and literacy research is to contribute to scientific understanding. Although such research often has implications for the classroom, the practical realities can be hard to identify.
It is fair to say that the questions that researchers start with can seem distant and abstract in contrast to the practicalities of daily teaching and learning.
Yet, if we are to draw upon the rich vein of research that exists in this area, it is vital that researchers and educators learn to speak across the gap.
This year, we led a project with Dr Sarah McGeown, a senior lecturer of education at the University of Edinburgh, to explore how researchers and teachers were working together successfully.
We set up our own research-practice collaboration to edit a special issue of the Journal of Research in Reading, entitled ”Language and literacy: Connecting research and practice”.
We invited researchers to submit papers explaining how they had involved educational practitioners in the research process and recruited a team of editors and reviewers, including both researchers and educational practitioners.
Within the 13 resulting articles in the special issue, some key themes emerged around how researchers and educators have worked together effectively, ranging from lighter touch involvement by educators to those who were closely involved.
For example, Dr Emma Vardy and colleagues described how they systematically worked with different practitioners to adapt the Peer-Assisted-Learning-Strategies (PALS) approach for use in different countries (Iceland, the UK, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan). Their work reveals the importance of understanding the social and cultural context of each country (or region) when translating evidence-based reading programmes for use internationally. It is clear that different approaches lose impact if these aspects are not taken into consideration.
Research-practice partnerships were also used to support the development of interventions such as the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI), as described by Professor Maggie Snowling and colleagues. In their conclusions, they reflect on the importance of timely collaboration between researchers and professional colleagues including senior leaders, teachers, teaching assistants, speech and language therapists and psychologists.
Their article emphasised how such communication is crucial for developing interventions that are feasible and acceptable for all stakeholders and can be implemented with fidelity.
Taking things a step even further, Dr Nicole Landi and colleagues described how they brought their laboratory into school. They collaborated to embed neuroimaging approaches in school settings and worked with the teachers to understand the images produced from differing perspectives.
The teachers came to understand what neuroscience can and cannot explain, helping to dispel some of the persisting neuromyths that exist. Meanwhile, the researchers learned how teachers might interpret the findings and respond to them in the classroom.
Overall, the importance of taking the time to establish communication and a shared language between researchers and educational practitioners was a prominent theme.
American researcher Margaret Troyer shared her (not altogether successful) experiences of implementing large-scale randomised controlled trials across several administrations in the US.
The challenges Troyer faced stemmed partly from the differing perspectives of those involved: the researchers were understandably concerned that the research was conducted as carefully as possible, in contrast to the schools whose primary concern was the education and attainment of the students in their care. This ultimately resulted in schools deciding not to continue to be involved in the research: a lost learning opportunity for all.
This paper emphasises how important it is to ensure that the research process is acceptable and feasible for everyone, something that can only really be done if all stakeholders are involved from the start.
We are clear that working in collaboration is a powerful way, if not the only way, to ensure that research and practice move together in tandem. The papers we have assembled begin to suggest some ways in which this can be achieved, and what to avoid.
Ultimately, though, it is up to all of us - researchers and educators - to take the steps to make this more of a reality in our schools. If we would like to find the solutions to some of the more intractable challenges we face, collaborative partnerships across the research to practice gap may be our best hope.
Professor Jessie Ricketts is director of the Language and Reading Acquisition (LARA) Lab at Royal Holloway University and Megan Dixon is a doctoral student and associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.
This article has been adapted from Dixon, M., McGeown, S., & Ricketts, J. (2022). A special issue on language and literacy: Connecting research and practice. Journal of Research in Reading, 45(3), 253-257. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12408
