Research-invested schools working together

The Research-Invested Schools network is an exciting initiative of colleagues at The Scots College, Sydney; namely, Dr Hugh Chilton and Dr Caitlin Munday. Hugh and Caitlin utilised their ongoing relationship with Professor Peter Twining, Dr Carl Leonard and Professor Allyson Holbrook from the University of Newcastle, Australia to create immediate links between schools and Education academics. The network includes around 30 schools from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland and represents schools who are ‘charting a new course for the future of innovation and leadership in education’ (see http://www.researchinvestedschools.net).

Research-invested schools actively encourage research activity and use in schools in all sorts of different contexts. Whilst there is much diversity in the ways research-invested schools approach research, together we are positioning schools as active contributors to the knowledge produced in and for Education and as dynamic participants in building the knowledge economy.

There is a move away from schools and teachers being solely consumers of research or being “researched on”. Instead, staff, teachers, and students are encouraged to be contributors, creators and researchers. To have evidence-informed teaching practices, teachers need to become research-literate themselves. There is an exciting shift that values the teacher and their expertise, with Michael Fullan (2018) saying that his best ideas came from lead practitioners – the message being that practitioners are actually the experts on education (rather than academics).

For our Pymble students, as they step into higher education and then into futures, most likely in the knowledge economy, they need research literacy, too. Our Student Research Conference was an excellent forum for students to share their research and network with students from other schools and university academics. Student voice as part of our Ethics Committee is crucial for evaluating research planned at the College and the overwhelming interest from Year 9 to 11 students in our Data Science course is testament to their desire to upskill in data analysis.

There are a wide range of activities a “research-invested school” may be involved in:

Work with universities or academics to enable research at their schools.
Seek best practice and latest research to inform teachers to improve curriculum, pedagogy, and wellbeing initiatives.
Facilitate teachers undertaking action research, professional learning and accreditation.
Support staff in their postgraduate studies.
Upskill staff and students in research competencies such as literature review, survey design, ethics proposals, data analysis and academic writing.
Design action research or longitudinal studies into strategic initiatives at the school, such as our research into the impacts of outdoor education on learning and wellbeing.
Create platforms for researchers to share results in publications, conferences and professional networks.

In the last seven years, more than 30 Australian schools have either established a research centre, and/or appointed a ‘research lead’ to explicitly focus on building research capacity within their school. The movement is also global with schools investing in research activity in Europe and Americas. Research is no longer a “luxury” but a necessity.

You can read more about the Pymble Institute and Pymble’s journey to developing a research centre in this article by Anders Furze of the Australian Financial Review – australian-financial-review-afr-20220422 (1)

References

Fullan, M. (2018). Surreal Change: the real life of transforming public education. Oxfordshire: Routledge.

http://www.researchinvestedschools.net/