Much of the current conversation around the use of research in schools centers on research-driven approaches that bolster academic achievement for all students—a conversation influenced by the Every Student Succeeds Act and other district- and school-level efforts, such as Massachusetts’ How Do We Know initiative. This conversation is certainly necessary, helping policymakers decide what to prioritize and fund in the pursuit of excellence and equity. There are also ongoing attempts to improve practitioner access to research findings by the federal What Works Clearinghouse, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and the Center for Research Use in Education, among others.
But making sure that schools are implementing ‘tried and tested’ approaches on the ground should not be the only conversation, in part because applying research findings is not straightforward. Carrie Conaway (2020) notes that there is often a gap between the statistical language found in research papers and the relational ways in which these findings are enacted. Meanwhile, the range of available options is unnecessarily and inappropriately restricted if we only trust research involving randomized controlled trials (Thomas, 2016).
An alternative approach is to consider how research findings can complement an inquiry-based approach to education, whether in individual classrooms or whole schools. This approach casts educators as drivers in finding, adapting, and critically evaluating research evidence that is relevant to their unique contexts.
Using Research Evidence to Support Inquiry-Driven Innovation
We have seen how an inquiry-based approach can play out through an initiative called Creating Communities of Innovation (CCI), a four-year research-practice partnership between Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and seven schools in the United Arab Emirates. The seven schools belong to the same network but variously implement British, Indian, International Baccalaureate, and U.S. curricula and work with differing budgets and student populations.
More than 50 school leaders and classroom teachers worked with the research team to bring an inquiry-based lens to their school contexts. They worked in small study groups, using research findings to inspire new practices or try out practices that had been developed or tested elsewhere. Educators collaborated for at least two years to pilot, implement, evaluate, and eventually scale their innovations. The CCI initiative also established a cross-school community in which participants could share ideas, exchange constructive feedback, and reflect together about the overall journey of bringing new ideas into practice.
Figure 1. Inquiry-Driven Innovation (Duraisingh & Sachdeva, 2021)
Engaging in this work yielded insights into how educators might strategically use research findings as part of an inquiry-driven approach to educational practice. We propose four ways that schools can get started on their own journey.
Proposal #1: Start from an Inquiry Stance
A helpful starting place for integrating research into practice involves taking what Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2009) call an inquiry stance—one which approaches questioning as "a worldview and a habit of mind" rather than a series of steps to achieve results.
For educators in our research cohort, this inquiry work took many forms and happened both individually and in study groups. It included learning to observe school contexts in new ways, planning and piloting new practices, collecting and examining data, and reflecting on learning. Educators said that it was particularly powerful to engage with our educator tool based on slow looking—a practice developed by our Project Zero colleague Shari Tishman (2018) that invites us to move beyond immediate impressions by taking the time to look carefully and intentionally (Dawes Duraisingh and Sachdeva, 2021).
Figure 2. Slow Looking (Tishman, 2018; Duraisingh & Sachdeva, 2021)
By taking a fresh look at familiar contexts, educators noticed things that they hadn’t before. In one school, educators who intended to create a blended learning program realized through looking carefully at their students’ online conversations that learners seemed unable to participate meaningfully in dialogues. These educators then used academic databases to search for research-based practices and articles about the thinking dispositions for digital environments that would be most helpful to their work.
At another school, educators who began by observing how faculty spent their workdays to consider how to use time more efficiently ended up focusing on students, who had a hard time articulating their thoughts and engaging in critical thinking. They pivoted to looking for research-based frameworks around critical thinking.
Proposal #2: Work With What You've Got
Educators can also use research findings in contextually sensitive ways by first identifying existing successful practices in their settings. Trends in educational ideas can feed an impulse to throw out the old in place of the new. Looking at what is already working well guards against the likelihood of initiative fatigue and encourages schools to both use and learn from previously tried strategies. Our cohort schools surfaced these assets in various ways, such as soliciting input from stakeholders across the community (e.g., learners, parents, educators, staff) and gathering data and documentation to examine the effects of existing practices.
In one school, educators created a new hybrid approach to interdisciplinary learning that melded their existing work in design thinking, design challenges around global issues, and Project Zero structures and protocols called thinking routines—simple protocols that learners use to routinize ways of thinking and habits of mind (Project Zero, n.d.)
One of the educators reflected, "Whatever new practices we have started have all come in from existing ones. We’ve looked at ways of improving the existing practices and then as an offshoot of them, something new comes up. So, we’re not entirely going a new way."
Other schools with strong practices in place might consider how research could help them to upcycle materials, resources, or ideas from programs or curricula no longer in use. Even if last year’s new science curriculum was not an overall success, were there some components that did work well that could be reused in a new program? Or, could research-backed practices in science education be incorporated into the existing curriculum? Simply having reflective conversations with learners and educators about the pros and cons of previous initiatives could be a powerful starting place.
Proposal #3: Support Local Ownership
School leaders can also consider ways to help educators assume ownership over research and to cultivate investment among the school community (Nichols, 2021). Two schools from the research cohort stand out in this regard. The first is an Indian curriculum school called GEMS Legacy School (previously called Kindergarten Starters) that chose to introduce ideas from early childhood centers in Reggio Emilia, Italy. One idea exposed students to “provocations”—materials and ideas designed to provoke curiosity and a desire to learn more (Wien, 2008). They also instituted other research-based practices from Reggio Emilia schools, including group learning, exhibiting student work, documenting young children’s ideas, and supporting student-led projects (Project Zero and Reggio Children, 2001; Wien, 2008)—a dramatic departure from their teacher-centered classroom practices. Teachers recounted that, at first, they were preoccupied with accurate replication. But little by little, they became more confident in adapting the ideas to suit their own school.
In another example, Wellington International School (WIS) also took ownership over research-based ideas developed elsewhere. Educators developed what they called “WISical Thinking,” a classroom tool designed to promote critical thinking. They took six tenets found in a nursing journal article—analysis, applying standards, categorizing, focused information seeking, reasoning, and predicting and transforming—and developed related “I can…” statements to help learners consider and self-assess their use of critical thinking (e.g., “I can identify a problem that needs to be solved.”). They invited colleagues to tweak the tool to best suit their own subject areas and students, and they solicited feedback on how it was working (or not!) through evaluation surveys for the learners and educators involved in pilot testing.
By presenting the tool as a work in progress that could be modified and engaging others in the development process, the study group felt they built up broader investment in the tool—and the research that informed it.
Proposal #4: Investigate in Community
Working in communities to pool knowledge and research-based practices further supports educators to use research. At each participating school, the study groups brought together teachers from diverse academic subjects and with different levels of experience, as well as school administrators. As they implemented new ideas, educators sought feedback and advice from colleagues, parents, students, and staff through interviews, surveys, and focus groups.
The schools were also involved in a cross-school cohort that enabled educators to learn about others’ research-based ideas and emerging innovations through in-person gatherings, workshops, online conversations, and video updates. In this way, each school benefitted from receiving reactions to their work and targeted advice about other practices or models that might help push their work forward.
The project liaison based in Dubai noticed an important and unexpected effect: Though lower-resourced schools in the network had historically “looked up” to the well-resourced schools to replicate what they were doing, schools in this project paid equal attention to one another regardless of financial resources or prestige. They were able to avoid the type of professional collaboration that practitioners can find inauthentic or forced, especially if used to implement policy (Datnow and Park, 2018). The community aspect of the work helps research-based approaches gain traction and investment across the schools involved.
Final Takeaways
Schools have a moral obligation to look to empirical research and research-backed educational models to provide the best learning outcomes for their students. However, students also deserve to work with educators who have the agency to creatively adapt the information in ways that respect and make use of their day-to-day knowledge. Educators also deserve to not be expected to do this work in isolation. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it is that new ideas are needed in education and that many approaches are more doable than we would have imagined little more than a year ago. Research findings are more powerful when used within an overall approach to practice that is built on inquiry, curiosity, and an investigative spirit. Much of the bedrock for this work is already in place in schools in existing people, practices, and relationships.
Author’s note: The Creating Communities of Innovation project was funded by GEMS Education.
