Research in education is famous both for its potential benefits for education and for being useless - all at the same time. Now, if that sounds a bit contradictory, imagine an inventor making public his revolutionary invention – the wheel, after which the rest of the world would just keep walking. You'd say it makes no sense, but alas, this is the world we live in. Exceptions exist, of course, but mass adoption of research-backed practices is not something you will find often.
In my opinion, there are two reasons for that. First, there is misunderstanding about who the research is for. Second, there is not enough “digestion” of research – not all brilliant results research produces can be easily applied to teaching practice.
Audience problem
Research results, when convincing, are technically an actionable resource. If somebody tells you X works best and has proof for it, you’d be wise to use X. However, education is a fairly top-down enterprise, hence mass adoption of innovations can only start from the top. It is always a principal or a head teacher, a university president or maybe even the department of education itself. You cannot expect mass-adoption even at a school level unless that adoption begins as a policy or at least a push from the top.
That said, the higher in hierarchy the decision must be made, the less likely it is to be adopted. Usually, people in power are more concerned with money (for good reasons, too) than anything else. In fact, that’s probably why they hired you in the first place, and that's why employees often know and understand things better than their employers. This discrepancy between the authorities that “do nothing”, as it may look to others, and the bottom of the hierarchy that is longing for change and has a clearer, research-informed vision for it but no power to implement it widely is a common obstacle to qualitative change.
Difficulty of interpretation
In my work (and professional development of teachers is my specialization) I often hear complaints that teachers don’t want to read academic journals. The main reason for that, as managers and head teachers tell me, is that teachers seem to be lazy. Well, it is not exactly correct. I hear this often from either the people that themselves never read anything academic (think, the authorities that are busy with the financial or organizational side of things) or the people who read academic publications so much they have lost any kind of appreciation for the complexity and, oftentimes, indigestibility of the academic vernacular.
A lot of research is not only hard to understand but also very hard to interpret in a way that would enable practical application. This has been a common criticism towards researchers in the past couple of decades. Most research is sponsored by tax money or the money of the parents paying their kids’ tuition fees. It is only ethical to assume that when this money is used to produce research, the results will produce tangible improvements to the addressed area of inquiry. Going back to our inventor example at the beginning of the post, it is not enough to just invent a wheel, you also have to explain how it can be used and how others can benefit from its use.
In conclusion
Many institutions in my experience fail to understand that implementing change takes more effort, intellectual and physical, than providing academic resources to teachers or simply adopting a policy for something new. There is a desperate need for a mediator that has the ability, the time and the authority to convert research into something actionable and introduce new practices in a way that makes them sustainable.
So, will research ever marry practice? I believe it will, but probably not in the way I described in the previous paragraph. Since large organizations are so slow to change and professional practices are so deeply entrenched in organizational cultures, there are new trends in research – new methods and approaches to research and instructional design - that make adoption of evidence-based practices at the school level much more likely. More on that later.
