In many areas of applied work across the social, behavioural, and learning sciences there exists what is known as the "research-practice gap". This gap is a problem of limited communication between scientists examining research questions, and professionals working on practical problems with people in what we affectionately term the "real world".
The mismatch, or break, between these fields has two facets to it. On the one hand, there have been significant developments in our understanding of how experiences and behaviour work, but these insights are not put to best possible use addressing practical issues. On the other hand, limited resources supporting research are often apportioned based on the needs and interests of researchers, rather than the pressing real-world concerns of working practitioners.
The net result is a bad mixture of too little value being made from what we do know about the learning, experience, and behaviour, and too little effort put into key, serious needs.
For the past decade or so researchers
across these fields have been deeply involved in a kind of critical reflection. We have been evaluating how reliable our science is, and how well it is focused on questions that matter. A strong commitment has developed to doing things better. Changes are afoot, improvements to ensure greater transparency of what data are produced in research, and how it is analysed. We are working on new standards of practice in how research is evaluated and disseminated. These technical and procedural improvements are important, but they are solutions to technical and procedural problems. The research-practice gap, is something more basic.
Mostly, it's a social problem.
Too much information!
As a science matures, and addresses ever more complex concerns, and as the evidence base increases in size and diversity, the kinds of knowledge required to keep these endeavours in contact with the real world becomes ever more rich and extensive. The task of understanding people, and providing supports for them to do their job, face
their challenges, and overcome problems, is one that needs multiple forms of expertise. We also need collaboration across professional boundaries, with researchers communicating more clearly what the reliable outcomes of their research are, and practitioners with a louder voice in what research questions get asked, how projects are designed, and their results evaluated. We have procedures and technical abilities to tackle these questions separately, but we must also deal with how to stitch them together.
The somewhat surprising result of all of this is that the most important skill that every researcher needs to be good at is this: conversation. When we have lots and lots (and lots) of information, the harder problem becomes ensuring that people who need to be listened to are heard, that the information can be found and understood by those who need it, and of course, we need to be able to tell as quickly as possible how good the information is.
There is a movement, called the Open Science movement (McKiernan et al., 2016; UNESCO, 2018), which aims to overcome all of these barriers, to better our understanding of the world. Research work is to be done more in the open - with data, methods, and tools used more easily available for review. It is to be published openly, not behind paywalls, so that it is accessible to everyone. And it should involve a wider community of partners and stakeholders. It is a community with a diversity of viewpoints, though with shared interest in improving the value, rigour, and real-world connections of the work being done. This kind of openness and inclusivity provides the greatest opportunity for doing science well and closing the research-practice gap. Good research is done not by lonesome genii, but by communities. It is best supported not by private or secretive organisations, but by honestly engaged dialogue.
We at MIC are committed to revising our practices in line with these improving standards. More particularly, in the field of our educational research we are supporting a particular effort, through the development of the Teachers' Research Exchange, (T-REX, to its friends). This is of course a community endeavour, with partners in the University of Limerick, University of Galway, Dublin City University Institute of Education, Marino Institute of Education, Oide (the professional development support service for teachers and school leaders), and the Education Support Centres of Ireland (ESCI). It has been supported by the Teaching Council, the NCCA, the Department of Education, as well as, in previous iterations, the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education and the Centre for Effective Services.
An online community of practice for education research.
On the technical side of things, T-REX works a lot like many social networking or online forums with which you are already familiar - members can post status updates, share their work or viewpoints, engage in discussions, or form groups for collaborations. What makes T-REX what it is, though, are the people (McGann et al., 2020). This community is for teachers, student teachers, and higher education professionals all across Ireland. It is not a private or for-profit enterprise, harvesting data or otherwise focused on its own concerns, but is a platform with no aim but to provide a place for conversations in education research across Ireland.
Teachers around Ireland are engaged in loads of research work. This is not just postgraduate studies such as masters or doctorates, but enormous amounts done day-to-day as part of their jobs (and often not recognised as 'real' research, but it is). Because schools are mostly isolated from one another, and schools and colleges don't really communicate all that much, that means that huge amounts of work is being done that isn't spread openly through the education community. Work done by researchers in
universities and colleges is less likely to get to teachers whom it might support, and indeed may not be done with the greatest level of collaboration because these groups of professionals simply work in different places.
T-REX provides a shared common ground, one which every student teacher in Ireland can join, and keep the same profile throughout their professional development as a working educator. Teacher research conducted in one school can be shared not just locally, or regionally, but nationally, so that teachers working separately on the same topic are more likely to find one another, learn from each other, and build on each other's work. T-REX provides a place where higher education researchers can share their work directly with the community of their stakeholders, and if they do, teachers have a way of asking questions and feeding back on the impact of those shared results.
T-REX was designed to improve education research in Ireland, mostly by providing for more open, normalised conversations across professional and geographical boundaries. As our knowledge will never be perfect, the conversation will always be open-ended, as we reflect on what we do now, and figure out how we might do it better in the future.
References
McGann, M., Ryan, M., McMahon, J., & Hall, T. (2020). T-REX: The Teachers’ Research Exchange. Overcoming the Research-Practice Gap in Education. TechTrends, 64, 470–483.
McKiernan, E. C., Bourne, P. E., Brown, C. T., Buck, S., Kenall, A., Lin, J., McDougall, D., Nosek, B. A., Ram, K., Soderberg, C. K., Spies, J. R., Thaney, K., Updegrove, A., Woo, K. H., & Yarkoni, T. (2016). How open science helps researchers succeed. eLife, 5, e16800.
UNESCO. (2018). Open science training handbook. Open Science Training Handbook.
