Research School Network: Evidence Champions Deb Friis discusses the Evidence Champions programme that she has been running in Kent over the past 18 months

One of our training courses at Durrington Research School is Evidence Champions – currently being run for our second cohort of Kent schools. This article gives an overview of the course.

The course begins by looking at why schools need Evidence Champions. This quote from Carl Hendrick & Robin Macpherson’s 2017 book ​“What does it look like in the classroom?” makes a good case:

​“My view is that there is an ethical imperative to provide the best possible classroom conditions in which the students in our charge can flourish. This means rejecting what wastes time and embracing that which makes the most use of it. It’s difficult to think of another serious profession that has so wilfully discarded evidence and embraced the transient and the facile as much as education has, and while evidence cannot give us all the answers, it can at least provide us with a roadmap to avoid the dead-ends and backroads of faddism and misinformation.”

It is hard to argue with this sentiment but there are also a number of specific reasons for Evidence Champions. Apart from re-professionalising the workforce, as the quote above alludes to, an Evidence Champion can encourage rigorous evaluation of current policies and innovation, and contextualise evidence to suit the needs of the school, acting as a filter to mobilise research evidence across the school in a strategic way. They can ask difficult questions and help dispel prevalent myths and support disciplined enquiry across the school. Ultimately their goal might be to ensure school improvement priorities are framed in research evidence.

Early on in the course we raise the issue that light-touch interventions and resources alone are unlikely to make a difference and we look at two EEF trials from 2017 and discuss their lack of impact. With this in mind, we look at the different models that an Evidence Champion might follow and think about the pros and cons of each of these. Will they be a ​“special advisor” to leadership or have a more investigative or auditor role within the school? Or maybe they are a project manager, given a specific mission to achieve. Support from Senior Leadership however is vital, and we return to this throughout the course. After some discussion we look at a sample job description for a Research Lead position in a secondary school and consider how the different models are evident within this. We are clear that Evidence Champions are not expected to be an expert in everything but the next part of the course looks at what they should be aware of in more detail, and we also discuss mistakes to avoid when taking on this role – for example making sure that it does not just become one person’s ​“hobby”.

As a gap task delegates are asked to undertake an audit of research engagement in their own school and at the start of session 2 they link this to their vision for their role in their school. We then look at research methods and delve a little into the statistics behind the evidence, the meta-analyses and the research summaries. We look at the Red Flags for research, and also critique some studies. We look at how to read journal articles (which can be very dense) and then spend some time considering good sources of information – there are a wealth of good, high-quality resources available to help. We look in a bit more detail at the EEF Toolkit and the Guidance Reports and consider some best bets. We are aiming for our teaching to be research-informed rather than research-based – we are the experts in our own classrooms and we need to equip our staff with the tools to be able to make a difference to the students in front of them rather than dictate exactly how this should be done. The context of the available research evidence may well be different to that of our own setting and we must be mindful of this when looking for relevant research.

After some retrieval practice of the Red Flags for research, session 3 starts by looking at why evidence mobilisation is so difficult in schools. Delegates then consider their primary objective within their own school and look in detail at what methods they could use to achieve this. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various methods for disseminating research and bringing about change: journal or book groups, school blogs, CPD sessions, INSET days… a little and often approach, over time, is likely to be most successful. There are however some caveats. We need to try to ensure that all staff engage and some methods will require senior management support and / or systemic change to have any chance of being effective. A scattergun approach could have no real impact and subject specific considerations are always important. We next introduce the EEF report into Effective Professional Development and take a brief look at the mechanisms of successful PD, however as this report is the subject of another three-day course run by the Research School we only touch upon it here. Finally we take time to look at implementation (using the EEF’s Implementation Guidelines), and hence also evaluation, and delegates have a period of time to begin to put together their own implementation plans focusing on their priorities for their school.

Although this is an online course delivered entirely remotely, our first cohort of Kent Evidence Champions did also manage to meet face to face as a group after their online sessions had concluded. This was an invaluable opportunity for networking and discussing ideas and did not need much central input. We are hoping that these network meetings can continue so that our new Evidence Champions can support each other in promoting evidence-informed practice in their schools.

Deb is a maths teacher at Durrington High School. She is also a Maths Research Associate for Durrington Research School and Sussex Maths Hub Secondary Co-Lead. She is delivering the Evidence Champions online training and also the Effective Professional Development 3‑day course along with Chris Runeckles this year.