yes or good

Recently I've begun to ask myself the question as to whether within the 'school-research/evidence community'  there is a shared understanding of the similarities and differences between - research, quality improvement and evidence-based practice, and the ethical implications of these similarities and difference.  This is a critical issue because if schools and school leaders are not fully aware of the ethical issues, there is a real-risk that pupils will be disadvantaged by well meaning, but ultimately flawed attempts at randomised control trials masquerading as quality improvement or evidence-informed practice.  Unfortunately, this cannot be put down to ignorance - as the knowledge exists in the health-care sector of how to conduct ethically sound quality improvement interventions. So to help school leaders begin to explore the ethical implications of seeking to develop the research/evidence based school, this post will: define research, quality improvement and evidenc...

Recently I was involved in the back end of Twitter discussion with  -   @mmm684   @JarlathOBrien @AlisonMPeacock about the causes of staff turnover, and whether high staff turnover was a sign of a potentially dysfunctional SLT.  Given the limitations of Twitter, I thought it was best if I tried to expand my thinking about staff turnover, as staff turnover may have positives and negative causes. As such, I  thought it might be useful to develop this 2x2 matrix to think about the level and causes of staff turnover. Staff turnover Low High Reason Positive Q1 Q2 Negative Q3 Q4 In Q1, a school may have low staff turnover due to the supportive and developmental opportunities within the school.  The school may be growing so opportunities for advancement are naturally provided.  In Q2 you may have high levels of staff turnover which are the product of development opportunities being provided ...

As we approach the end of the autumn term, plans are no doubt being developed for new initiatives or innovations which are going to be introduced in the New Year.  Unfortunately, the introduction of an initiative, policy or change within a school often results in failure, maybe in part due to individuals not be willing to speak-up about potential problems with the change or intervention, particularly if its is viewed as a headteacher's 'pet-project.'   So to help with this problem, I'm going to use the work of Klein (2007a) who developed a technique called a  premortem,  and   which happens to be one of Daniel Kahneman's favourite approaches to try and increase the quality of decisions within organisations. What is premortem? As Klein states :  A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient's death.  Everyone benefits except,...

There are a number of reasons why it is particularly important for both school research champions and evidence-based school leaders to make good use of the abstracts found at the beginning of published papers.  First, the full text of the majority peer-reviewed published papers sit behind pay-walls, which makes it expensive for the evidence-based school leader to access research.  As such abstracts provide a summary of the paper indicating the topics covered, the approach adopted and the main claims made, without the expenses of paying for access to the full-paper.   Second, because so much research is published each and abstracts are very short, often no more than 150-200 words, skilled reading of research abstract makes it much easier to keep up with the latest research in your area of interest.  Finally, and most importantly as  (Wallace and Wray, 2016)  note the very brevity of abstracts, encourages the development of critical ...

The school research lead and do you work in a ‘stupid’ school? Schools are full of bright people.  Unfortunately, many of our schools have become vehicles for stupidity.  Bright teachers stop thinking and start doing really stupid things, such as they stop asking challenging questions.  Now, this might make perfect sense for the individual teacher and make the school a tolerable working environment, though in the long-term will be a complete disaster for both the individual teacher and the school.  So in this post we will look at the work of (Alvesson and Spicer, 2016)  and examine what is meant by the term ‘functional stupidity’.  We will then briefly go onto examine how functional stupidity comes about.  Finally, we will consider what you as an evidence-based school leader can do to counter the development of functional stupidity within your school. What do we mean by functional stupidity? (Alvesson and Spic...

A major challenge for the school research lead is whether they are able to help colleagues develop the capacity and capability to interpret research findings.  In particular, can school research help colleagues to correctly interpret the statistical findings which are often found in research reports.  So this post, I will look at the specific challenges of using the correlation coefficient(r ) when seeking to interpreting Daniel Goleman’s  work on leadership and emotional intelligence  (Goleman, 2000) .  To help us do this I will:   Summarise Goleman’s work on leadership that gets results. Briefly explain what is meant by the term correlation coefficient and the implications for interpreting Goleman's work Consider some broader points about the challenge of using correlation in educational leadership research and the implications for practice Daniel Goleman and leadership that gets results Goleman argues that leaders often mistakenly assume t...

An essential element of the school research lead's role is to help incorporate evidence – research, school data, stakeholder views and practitioner expertise into the decision-making process.  Now to assist us with this task  (Drucker, 2001)  provides us with two useful ‘rules of thumb’ to be applied when incorporating the evidence into the decision-making process, which are: Act if on balance the benefits greatly outweigh cost and risk. Act or do not act, but do not ‘hedge’ or compromise.  (p196) However, identifying the risks and costs of whether to adopt a new intervention or strategy may not be as straightforward as you might hope.    (Zhao, 2017)  argues that educational research has largely ignored the potential harms arising from research into 'what works.'  As such, it may not be that easy for you as an evidence-based school research lead to identify the negative side effects associated with an intervention, which in ...