How Do We Know What Works?

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As teachers, much of what we teach comes from the government and their many whims about what they feel is a worthy education of our children. However, the way that we implement it and the strategies that we choose to use still leave us with a lot of flexibility.

Personally, I like to look at the evidence and research before starting something new, as I want to know that someone may have tried it before me and that it had an effect on the children.

While we were all studying, we had access to university libraries and their vast online resources of journals. As soon as you leave, this access goes. So where can we look to find out what academics and researchers believe work? I want to share three resources with you that I find really useful.

  1. Education Endowment Fund- this organisation was set up as a charity to break the link between family income and educational outcome. They have many great resources online, the one that I regularly refer to is the toolkit. It lists strategies, cost, strength and how much progress it could make for children on average.

2. The Chartered College of Teaching launched this year. It is not compulsory, yet it is a body that encourages teachers to consider joining as it wants to provide a body that can lead on what teaching and learning looks like in schools. I am interested in that, as I feel that we have the knowledge and skills to be able to set our own agenda. Doctors for instance do not have a group of ministers outlining how they must work or change their practice every 3-5 years. The second reason I joined is that membership allows you access to their vast research databases. I am now in research heaven with easy access to thousands of educational research papers. https://chartered.college

3. Research Autism was mentioned by Ashleigh at  our Autism training session in June. It lists the interventions that are being implemented for children and adults with autism and their effectiveness (or danger).  This is a useful tool if you are working with children in your class, or if parents come to you saying that they want to try something, you could signpost them to this website. http://www.researchautism.net/autism-interventions/our-evaluations-interventions

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