On the first Saturday after school opened in September 2013, over 500 British educators, policy wonks, and researchers came to Dulwich College simply to “talk, listen and learn.” With the support of former UK policy advisor Sam Freedman and The Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre, the incipient movement took-off and spread across Britain. The movement founder, Tom Bennett, who ran Soho night clubs before entering teaching, became its passionate emissary and pied piper, sponsoring follow-up events in York and Birmingham. When both were sell-outs, researchED began to develop even more expanding throughout 2014 , far beyond the wildest dreams of its pioneers.
Tom Bennett and ResearchEd have tapped into the creativity, energy and ideas of regular teachers and “ideas people’ from outside the normal cloistered world of academe and the “fad-prone” educational bureaucracy. While accepting the critical value of “educational experience,” Tom and his supporters see “huge areas” that are “amenable to scientific investigation” utilizing insights from other subject disciplines, not just psychology. “It’s time teachers started insisting upon evidence,” Tom declares, “before being expected to accept every claim and magic bullet sent their way. It’s time for a quiet revolution.”
The ResearchEd movement has not only expanded, but amassed considerable brainpower — mostly from outside the established OECD Education circles. Surveying the ResarchEd contributors, now numbering well over 60 individuals, it’s a very eclectic, diverse group of thinkers ranging from Founder and Chief Executive of the Teacher Development Trust David Weston and Times Education Supplement editor Ann Mroz to Science Education specialist Mary Whitehouse and well-known Head Teacher Tom Sherrington.
The UK’s Teacher Conference success story of 2014 comes to the USA in early May of 2015. The first North American ResearchEd conference will be on Saturday May 2, 2015 at the Riverside School in the Bronx area of New York City. One look at the line-up of speakers and you can see that it will be a ground-breaking day for teachers, academics, and anyone interested in finding out what the latest research really says about how to improve classrooms and schools. Some of America’s and the UK’s most prominent thought leaders, academics and educators will be there, very few of whom were invited to the recent ISTP2015 Conference in Banff, Alberta, dominated by education ministers, union leaders, and hand-picked ‘friendlies.’
One example of ResearchED’s iconoclastic spirit appeared in the April Issue of its online magazine. “Only one in ten education reforms,” Gemma Ware of The Conversation reported, is ever “analyzed for their impact.” Based upon an OECD study covering 34 member countries from 2008 to 2013, that was worth reporting. So was OECD education director Andreas Schleicher’s comment that the education world needs a “more systematic and evidence-based approach to reforms.” Most significantly, Finnish education guru Pasi Sahlberg is quoted as conceding that education authorities have little appetite for spending more studying “failure.”
In today’s education world, ResearchED is a breath of fresh air with a commitment to bringing the UnConference to the neglected field of education policy research. Inspired partly by the progressive EdCamp movement. it may pose a threat to the ‘usual suspects’ like education experts Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, and Pasi Sahlberg who tend to identify trends, feed-off one another, and tap into the educational treasure chest of OECD Education and state education authorities. Not to mention plowing those resources into the very traditional pedantic, OISE-centred graduate student KMb (Knowledge Mobilization) research movement. What’s appealing about Tom Bennett’s grassroots insurgency is it’s cheekiness and willingness to tilt at the windmills propelling the modern education state.
Does the ResearchED movement have the potential to challenge popular ‘fads and fetishes’ that constantly wash over public education? Can regular teachers be engaged in assisting to develop research-based, workable solutions to the system’s chronic problems? Will Tom Bennett’s little ‘quiet revolution’ move beyond simply stirring the pot? Will the North American education establishment even notice the little disturbance in the Bronx?
Educhatter 
Seems to me that it makes more sense for s teacher to develop a “mindset” (to use John Hattie’s phrase) to assess the impact they have on students, if you believe that most everything works, sort of, in a classroom.
This approach I am trying to document in my own career and have begun to share with others. I have worked with a colleague for more than a decade looking at innovation from the bottom up in which teachers see an ideas, or a problem, or an issue in their classrooms and try to address it and document the changes that occur: a 21st century version of “action research”.
It would be nice if such efforts were supported by outside structures to make it easier for us to document our efforts. They seem to be able to do this in places like Japan through such ideas as “lesson study”.
There certainly has been too much press on fads and fancies without proper assessment of their effects. Most fads we are exposed to in Canada come from the US and some from the UK.
The problem needs to be faced in a straight forward manner.
Political masters resist any reform that costs money. Recent DFK in Ontario a refreshing difference.
The vast majority of reforms from the GERM movement are based on blame the teacher, blame the union or blame John Dewey and deny the toxic effects of poverty so they are obviously going nowhere.
IMHO there is almost no need for “innovation” which ends up being another excuse for privatization or spending the entire budget keeping Bill Gates happy with IT or Pearson happy with test, all dead ends.
We know what to do:
De stream
End testing
Lower class sizes
More and deeper ECE
More PD
End competition which makes things worse (OECD)
Pay American teachers a lot more (Canadians a little more) CD Howe.
Free tuition 1st in college later in university.
Oh my where will all the money come from?
Like Pharma care it is actually cheaper than not doing it.
Fads exist in education partially because little time is put into actually implementing innovations. Most attempts at reforms only last a few years while students spend up to 15 years in the education system. How can innovation and growth occur when things are constantly changing and little time is allowed for things to evolve on their own.
I also find it amazing that we continue to look at the US for innovation rather than world leaders in education like Korea and Finland. The US is well known for spending more money on things like education and health care with lower results. Perhaps we need to increase vocational and apprenticeship schooling for students like Finland or make reaching post-secondary education an accomplishment like Korea. Our students receive few opportunities for vocational training and consider post-secondary education a right, similar to everyone getting a trophy in a sports league.
I agree with you Matt point by point. We are a top 3-4 nation. We have little to learn from #17.
I don’t particularly like Fullan. He is too far right for me. Fullan supports testing which rules him out of the progressive club. Andy and Pasi are ok, well intentioned but don’t take their argumentation far enough.
Long on opinion, sort on evidence.
It’s just refreshing that this conference actually reviews empirical evidence…something that is currently lacking right now in education. Too many fads, too many pet theories, too many children attending tutors and outside learning centres to learn their foundational reading and arithmetic skills.
Perhaps conferences like these might enforce effective instruction in the classroom. Thanks for this insight Paul.
Yes, while I think there are still too many opinions with no empirical or logical evidence to support, this blog is better than some.
For example there is a blog out of Toronto that is using the “Cheryl’s birthday”
math problem from Singapore (viral on Youtube) to bash math ed in Canada.
While I wish our math ed was better, the assertion made in the Toronto blog that the problem is given to grade 5s in Singapore is FLAT OUT WRONG!
Because my brief experience on that blog was “uncivil” I do not comment on it.
This blog is civil and can shape, refine, or change my thinking.
The arrival of Research ED has sparked a small flurry of activity. Here’s a new feature article by Justina Reichel in the Epoch Times:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1344967-do-canadas-schools-need-a-quiet-revolution/
It is high time for a “quiet revolution” in Canadian education research. Anyone familiar with Educhatter’s Blog will know why.