This paper explores the challenge of mobilising research to inform ongoing improvement in valued outcomes for diverse (all) learners across school systems. The context is an innovative approach to brokering collaborative knowledge-building and use across educational policy, research, and practice communities in a jurisdiction of 2559 schools. The focus of this paper is on the use of three research resources as tools for knowledge mobilisation: best evidence syntheses (BES) on effective educational leadership, professional learning and development, and teaching; an inquiry and knowledge-building tool for improvement across a system, and BES exemplars of high-impact pedagogies. Such exemplars illuminate approaches that simultaneously advance multiple valued outcomes for diverse (all) learners including academic, social, and self-regulatory outcomes, a focus that goes directly to the potential for research evidence to advance the public good. The paper highlights how leverage has been and could be created for opportunities for improvement and identifies challenges that need to be addressed to support ongoing improvement at a systemic level. The paper is explicit about public good imperatives that require more deliberate action for accelerated improvement, especially in times of global economic and fiscal crisis. The paper calls for strategic investment in high-impact, collaborative research and development to:
- leverage and develop capability for accelerated improvement for those underserved by schooling;
- create an engine to drive disciplined innovation;
- ensure that policy reforms achieve deep changes in teaching and learning; and
- activate the educationally powerful connections with diverse learners and their communities, required for ongoing whole of system improvement.
The paper concludes with ten key messages to inform effective action in the use of evidence for educational improvement in the service of the public good.
Purpose
The intention for this paper is that it will advance improvement in education. Its objectives are to:
- explain an innovative approach to brokering the development and use of research knowledge about what works, why, and how; what makes a bigger difference, and what does not work for educational improvement for diverse (all) learners, across policy, research, and practice communities;
- highlight expertise, tools, and action needed for mobilising this knowledge through policy, research, and practice engagement, collaboration, and action; and
- identify challenges in systemic change processes in order to strengthen the role of knowledge mobilisation at a system level.
The purpose of the innovation is to use research evidence and advance the strategic use of collaborative research and development to improve education at a system level in ways that serve the public good; with consideration of value for investment in times of fiscal constraint. This purpose includes championing a "first do no harm" principle in education as in health and finding ways to give that principle effect in policy and practice. "Improvement" from a BES perspective means optimising ongoing educational improvement in valued outcomes for diverse (all) learners with a priority for accelerated improvement for learners who have been underserved in their education or disadvantaged.