Do pupils at research-informed schools actually perform better? Findings from a study at English schools
Do pupils at research-informed schools actually perform better? Findings from a study at English schools
Introduction: across the globe, many national, state, and district level governments are increasingly seeking to bring about school “self improvement” via the fostering of change, which, at best, is based on or informed by research, evidence, and data. According to the conceptualization of research-informed education as inquiry cycle, it is reasoned that there is value in combining the approaches of data-based decision-making and evidence-informed education. The originality of this paper lies in challenging common claims that teachers’ engagement with research supports development processes at schools and pupil performance.
Methods: to put this assumption to test, a data-set based on 1,457 staff members from 73 English primary schools (school year 2014/2015) was (re-)analyzed in this paper. Not only survey information about trust among colleagues, organizational learning and the research use climate was used (cf. Brown et al., 2016), but also the results from the most recent school inspections and the results from standardized assessment at the end of primary school. Of particular interest was, as to whether the perceived research use climate mediates the association between organizational learning and trust at school on the one hand and the average pupil performance on the other, and whether schools that were rated as “outstanding,” “good,” or “requires improvement” in their most recent school inspection differ in that regard. Data was analyzed based on multi-level structural equation modelling.
Results: our findings indicate that schools with a higher average value of trust among colleagues report more organizational and research informed activities, but also demonstrate better results in the average pupil performance assessment at the end of the school year. This was particularly true for schools rated as “good” in previous school inspections. In contrast, both “outstanding” schools and schools that “require improvement” appeared to engage more with research evidence, even though the former seemed not to profit from it.
Discussion: the conclusion is drawn that a comprehensive model of research-informed education can contribute to more conceptual clarity in future research, and based on that, to theoretical development.
data-based decision-making, english education system, evidence-informed teacher education, organisational learning, pupil performance assessment, research-informed practice, school inspection, trust
Groß Ophoff, Jana
e0a3ed33-7bbb-47e1-a52b-2e89deafa7fd
Brown, Chris
42bbe788-54bf-4081-8c18-ead8b554f0fd
Helm, Christoph
a2ebcf6b-d8cd-4a3a-9b4d-16f25a5e79f1
4 January 2023
Groß Ophoff, Jana
e0a3ed33-7bbb-47e1-a52b-2e89deafa7fd
Brown, Chris
42bbe788-54bf-4081-8c18-ead8b554f0fd
Helm, Christoph
a2ebcf6b-d8cd-4a3a-9b4d-16f25a5e79f1
Groß Ophoff, Jana, Brown, Chris and Helm, Christoph
(2023)
Do pupils at research-informed schools actually perform better? Findings from a study at English schools.
Frontiers in Education, 7, [1011241].
(doi:10.3389/feduc.2022.1011241).
Abstract
Introduction: across the globe, many national, state, and district level governments are increasingly seeking to bring about school “self improvement” via the fostering of change, which, at best, is based on or informed by research, evidence, and data. According to the conceptualization of research-informed education as inquiry cycle, it is reasoned that there is value in combining the approaches of data-based decision-making and evidence-informed education. The originality of this paper lies in challenging common claims that teachers’ engagement with research supports development processes at schools and pupil performance.
Methods: to put this assumption to test, a data-set based on 1,457 staff members from 73 English primary schools (school year 2014/2015) was (re-)analyzed in this paper. Not only survey information about trust among colleagues, organizational learning and the research use climate was used (cf. Brown et al., 2016), but also the results from the most recent school inspections and the results from standardized assessment at the end of primary school. Of particular interest was, as to whether the perceived research use climate mediates the association between organizational learning and trust at school on the one hand and the average pupil performance on the other, and whether schools that were rated as “outstanding,” “good,” or “requires improvement” in their most recent school inspection differ in that regard. Data was analyzed based on multi-level structural equation modelling.
Results: our findings indicate that schools with a higher average value of trust among colleagues report more organizational and research informed activities, but also demonstrate better results in the average pupil performance assessment at the end of the school year. This was particularly true for schools rated as “good” in previous school inspections. In contrast, both “outstanding” schools and schools that “require improvement” appeared to engage more with research evidence, even though the former seemed not to profit from it.
Discussion: the conclusion is drawn that a comprehensive model of research-informed education can contribute to more conceptual clarity in future research, and based on that, to theoretical development.
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feduc-07-1011241
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 14 November 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 4 January 2023
Published date: 4 January 2023
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The sample for this study was gathered within a project that sought to investigate how schools can be supported in applying existing research findings to improve outcomes and narrow the gap in pupil outcomes. Funding for the project was granted by the Education Endowment Foundation in 2014. Schools were recruited by Brown and colleagues through use of Twitter, the direct contacts of the project team and via direct mail (e)mailing lists held by the UCL Institute of Education’s London Centre for Leadership in Learning. Schools were invited to sign up to the project straight away, to discuss the project and any queries directly with the project team or to attend one of two recruitment events held in June 2014. For the analysis presented below, a sample of 1,457 staff members from 73 primary schools was available. Approximately 20 teachers per school answered the survey. In terms of their characteristics, 70 percent of the study participants had, at that time, less than four years of experience working in their current position. Further, 81 percent were female; approximately 48 percent were serving as a subject leader (e.g., math lead or coordinator); and 18 percent held a formal and senior leadership position (e.g., headteacher). The majority of participating schools were judged as “good” in their most recent school inspection (67.1%), and a smaller amount were graded as “outstanding” (26.0%) or as “requir[ing] improvement” (4.1%), while for 2.7 percent no such information was available.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 Groß Ophoff, Brown and Helm.
Keywords:
data-based decision-making, english education system, evidence-informed teacher education, organisational learning, pupil performance assessment, research-informed practice, school inspection, trust
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 483866
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/483866
ISSN: 2504-284X
PURE UUID: 3ffc819c-9960-466a-9749-27d892ef876b
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Date deposited: 07 Nov 2023 17:47
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:16
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Author:
Jana Groß Ophoff
Author:
Chris Brown
Author:
Christoph Helm
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