This poster has been fermenting for some time, and I recently wheeled it out in the context of the Network for Educational Action Research in Ireland (NEARI). Then, today, Monday 15th April 2019, Tom Sherrington published a blog with the title ‘From research to the classroom: roadblocks, resistance and blind faith‘, and I had to get on with it!
My take is that teachers are hemmed in by influences, rather like the wall in Pink Floyd’s song (I bought the laser disc!) and we should not be surprised that engagement is problematic. Tom Sherrington makes this much less abstract in his analysis, imagining the responses that teachers might make.
I was provoked to think about these ideas for the Computing at School Research group back in November 2015 and at the same meeting I presented the following analysis of stereotypes of teachers engagement with research in education:
I feel that we should be very tolerant of teachers’ varied and varying engagement – apart from the profession itself being time-poor, people have their lives to live!