I have had this blog site for a while, but as the more beady-eyed amongst you may have noticed, this is my first actual blog. Of course, I’ve been intending to write something for a while, and in fact I have a draft that I wrote way back in November that is still incomplete. However, today, I attended ResearchEd Midlands. It was a fascinating, thought-provoking and thoroughly enjoyable day, which has inspired me to write my first ever blog! So, in a light-hearted way I thought I would share ten things which I learnt from today (the deep and meaningful analysis will hopefully come later once I have had a chance to digest everything I have seen and heard today)
So, in no particular order, here are ten things I have learnt from ResearchEd Midlands:
- There are some great people out there doing some wonderful things with educational research
- There are some great people out there attempting to do some crazy, (but interesting) things with educational research – and yes, Michael Slavinsky and Alex Weatherall, – that’s you!
- There is a real appetite for real-life educational research among teachers who really want to make a difference in the classroom. I know this because many of us bothered to turn up on a Saturday to ResearchEd, and there are many more out there who would be willing to.
- Some educational research is better than others
- There is not enough time given to teachers to allow them to undertake proper, practitioner-led educational research. There are a few enlightened schools out there, but on the whole, many teachers who are undertaking research are doing so in addition to everything else they have to do.
- There is a often a gap between the real-life teaching element and the academically rigorous research element. However, I’m not convinced that this is as big an issue as it might seem – if small scale research changes practice for the better in one school or classroom, then does it matter if there is no academically-robust statistics behind it? Can the practice itself inform the research rather than the other way round?
- CPD, including undertaking research, has the potential to be transformational if we move away from having it done ‘to’ us and start doing it ‘for’ us. ( Actually, I kind of knew this already, but it’s nice to have some of my own ideas confirmed)
- TeachFirst graduates love an educational research project!
- The people I follow on Twitter actually exist. Oldandrew is a real person, and Tom Bennett is Scottish! Who knew?
- And finally, like many teachers, I’ve realised that I am already doing stuff in my day to day teaching which it turns out is backed up by research, so I must be doing something right!
So there it is, and brief summary of my day. JHNCC were great hosts, and I want to say thank you to Tom Bennett and Hélène Galdin-O’Shea for coming up with the brilliant idea of ResearchEd. I am definitely a fan, and I am now planning ways in which I can undertake my own educational research. Watch this space!
Switching on the Lightbulb 
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.