TLDR: A recent study concluded that written summaries of evidence on effective instructional practices may not be particularly useful for changing teacher practice. Yet communicating research evidence through written materials has long been the main way that educational researchers attempt to move evidence into practice. As researchers, we need to do a better job of understanding which research communication strategies are effective with which audiences when it comes to influencing policy and practice. We also must be willing to change our own practice when confronted with evidence that what we’ve been doing isn’t working.
A recent study published in a top education research journal has sparked a great deal of interest and discussion among many of us who work in this field. The study authors wanted to learn more about what motivates teachers to adopt evidence-based instructional practices. To examine this, they created different versions of a research summary describing the same effective instructional practice, and then they randomly assigned the different versions among 3,000 teachers from the Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States who agreed to participate in the study. The teacher participants read the version they received and responded to questions about the summary.
The researchers’ goal was to determine which versions of the research summary increased teachers’ intentions to use the evidence-based instructional practice. What they found, however, was that there was no relationship between how the research summary was designed and teachers’ intentions to use the instructional practice. The study authors concluded, based on their findings, that written research communications, no matter how well written, may not be particularly effective for changing teacher practice.
Does this mean that nothing works to change instruction in response to evidence?
Like many in the field, my initial reaction held a bit of discouragement. Many of us have spent the better part of our careers trying to build and support the use of evidence that can lead to better educational and life outcomes for US students. And if you interpret the study to mean that, when it comes to getting teachers to use evidence-based practices, nothing really makes much of a difference, then yeah, the findings are pretty discouraging.
But this isn’t what the research demonstrates or what the authors are saying, and it isn’t how I ultimately read the findings. What we learn from the study is that written research summaries may not have much influence on teacher intentions to use evidence-based practices. This isn’t so surprising. After all, it took a startlingly long time (decades!) and a range of strategies to finally get medical professionals to adopt more effective handwashing practices. It definitely required more than a written handout.
Changing instructional practice is a complex and challenging process
Effective teaching is cognitively demanding. It takes a lot of practice. Experienced teachers develop deeply internalized instructional routines based on the knowledge they’ve built over time about how students learn. As one long-time expert in the field recently put it, “[c]hanging those routines is not a matter of informing teachers of a new approach or handing them new materials.” Changing instructional practice requires changing well-established habits and building new knowledge. Even under the best of circumstances, when supportive conditions are in place over time to help teachers sustain changes in practice, the entire process can take two to four years or more. It takes longer still to shift the instructional culture of an entire school.
Researchers must do more than “publish and pray” if we are serious about connecting evidence to practice
Perhaps more than anything, the findings underscore the limitations of the standard researcher practice of sharing study findings through journal articles, reports, and briefs and hoping the evidence makes its way to teachers. This approach has been characterized as “publish and pray.” For those of us interested in moving evidence about instructional and other changes that can improve students’ trajectories into policy and practice, we need to be a lot more curious about the conditions under which teachers do and don’t (intend to) change practice in response to evidence. We need to identify and build authentic relationships with the evidence intermediaries, such as professional associations or professional learning providers or other kinds of knowledge brokers, teachers are more inclined to trust. We need to recognize that different audiences, whether teachers or state policymakers or district and school leaders, may require different communication approaches if we truly want to help them implement evidence.
Moving research from the page into practice isn’t easy, not only because it is hard work but also because there are often completely valid reasons why the audiences we hope to reach may be skeptical. This doesn’t mean changing educational practice in response to evidence simply isn’t possible. But I do think it means that, as researchers, we need to do a better job of understanding which communication strategies are effective with which audiences when it comes to influencing policy and practice. And it means we must be willing to change our own practice when confronted with evidence that what we have been doing to communicate about research isn’t working.