Research School Network: Ask the expert – Kathryn Asbury

Name: Kathryn Asbury

Role: Senior Lecturer, Department of Education, University of York

What does evidence informed practice mean to you?

Teachers should be aware of which approaches are known – on the basis of robust, replicated and reliable research – to be associated with pupil progress and wellbeing. More pressingly, they should know when a widespread practice has been found to be ineffective or even harmful. However, teachers already do a full-time job so we need mechanisms that mean teachers are well informed without having to spend hours of their own time ploughing through journal articles.

Why do you think it is so important to embrace evidence informed practice?

So that we don’t keep making the same mistakes and so that teachers, pupils and society can benefit from the progress that is made in research.

Which piece/​s of research has had most impact on you?

One paper and one book sparked my desire to pursue a research career. Before that I was planning to become a child psychotherapist but I switched my plan to doing a PhD with Robert Plomin at King’s College London. They were:

Plomin, R., & Daniels, D. (1987). Why are children in the same family so different from one another?. Behavioral and brain Sciences, 10(1), 1 – 16.

Harris, J. R. (2011). The nurture assumption: Why children turn out the way they do. Simon and Schuster.

Can you explain why and how you have used this research?

Both of these pieces of work are about non-shared environment i.e. experiences that affect children growing up in the same family differently. They show very clearly how the experiences we had typically thought to be formative – to shape who we are – don’t work in the way we thought they did. Experiences that are the same for two children growing up in the same family (e.g. parenting, poverty, possessions, access to schools) make those children more similar to each other, not different. This means that when we look for experiences that make a difference (regardless of genetic effects) we should be looking for non-shared experiences. When we design interventions to, say, reduce the attainment gap between high and low achievers, we need to be looking for non-shared experiences. The best way of identifying these experiences is to look at monozygotic (identical) twins who differ from each other and I used this book and paper as the inspiration for a series of studies of identical twins who differ from each other in aspects of behaviour including anxiety, hyperactivity, GCSE achievement and wellbeing.

What difference has this made?

I’m not sure it has made a difference yet. We still see a lot of environmental interventions that are focused on everyone e.g. free books for all nursery children, free school meals for everyone in EYFS or KS1, a whole school growth mindset intervention etc. This is fine if the aim is to improve average performance. However, I’m not sure that the message has got through that these approaches will not – cannot – reduce attainment gaps, or any other kind of gap. In fact, there’s reason to believe they may make gaps bigger as more advantaged pupils typically benefit more from any intervention. If you want to focus on disadvantaged learners you need to target only them. This makes interventions like Pupil Premium a good idea, if used well. Using it well involves understanding NSE influences on individual learners and creating a genuinely bespoke enrichment package to meet individual needs. A move in this direction, in all schools, is the difference I would like this research to make … but we’re certainly not there yet.

What would you say are the key ​‘take-aways’ for teachers, from this piece of research?

Focus on individual differences as well as means. For a child who is struggling a more bespoke package may be required – that is sensitive to their individual strengths and difficulties – regardless of whether they have an ​‘official’ reason to struggle e.g. EHCP. If you want to close the gap – and the unusually long tail of underachievement we have in England means we really should want to do this – we need to prioritise the bespoke enrichment of the educational experiences of those who struggle above raising average performance.

What advice would you give to teachers who are interested in becoming more ​‘evidence informed’?

Keep an eye on the Research Schools Network – it’s brilliant.

Keep an eye on Twitter – it is really good for making you aware that there’s stuff out there that you don’t know and might be interested in.

Contact researchers directly if you have questions – most are very happy to engage.

Encourage your school to make it easy for you to stay informed e.g. through exemplary use of Inset days etc.