Harnessing evidence to meet the

21C challenge

SIR KEVAN COLLINS

MELBOURNE MAY 2019

The 21C challengeEducation disadvantage Education innovation

400

420

440

460

480

500

520

540

560

580

600

Scotland Canada - British Columbia

OECD Average Estonia Australia

PIS

A m

ea

n s

cie

nc

e s

co

res

20

15

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

% of innovative jobs by sector

Knowledge/methods Product/service Technology/tools

Source: OECD (2014), Measuring Innovation in Education: A New Perspective, Chapter 4; REFLEX (2005); HEGESCO (2008).

The battle for professional capacity

An informed and

confident

professionWho tells you what to do?

An innovative and

disciplined

professionOn what basis do they tell you?

A restless and

curious profession

Are we serving all children well?

Meeting the challenge

1. Start from what we knowidentify trusted sources of evidence to provide the platform for professional dialogue. If

not evidence then what….

2. Build shared wisdom and reject ideologypromote disciplined innovation with robust measures of impact particularly for the most

disadvantaged

3. Sharing success – and failure!We need to build greater trust right across the system and build up from the evidence

rather than fads and one off events that mask the lived education of our children

Education is facing unprecedented change, but learning and evidence

findings can take decades to make an impact in the classroom.

1. How can schools overcome the barriers to using research well?

2. How can research organisations and others effectively communicate

their findings?

3. What support from networks and mediators do schools need to access and embed research?

A system fit of purpose?

Schoolse.g. individual

teachers, leaders, parents and

school partnerships

Evidence producers

Universities, funders and government

Mediators Trusted brokers, schools networks in the UK the

EEF

Start from what we know

Ours is a shared and collective endeavour

We are susceptible to fads and ideologies

Insatiable demand requires us to better appreciate

cost and effort

Knowledge is the ‘raw material’ of the 21st century

Much of what we already know hasn’t been mobilised

Associations between foods and cancer

Teaching and Learning Toolkit

https://evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkit/

The biggest differences are made at the

school and classroom level

-100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100

Indonesia

Algeria

Dominican Republic

Costa Rica

Mexico

Peru

Colombia

Hong Kong (China)

Chile

Argentina**

Italy

Japan

Uruguay

Brazil

Germany

Russia

Switzerland

OECD average

Estonia

Spain

Korea

Ireland

Poland

Singapore

Canada

United Kingdom

United States

Australia

Finland

Norway

New Zealand

Variation between schools Variation within schools

Source: OECD PISA 2015 Results Equity and Excellence in Education

Disciplined innovationWe are working to fund, develop and evaluate

projects that:

➢ Work in classrooms, schools or families

➢ Are susceptible to rigorous evaluation

➢ Can be scaled and ‘put to work’

Examples: Providing breakfast, increasing

exercise in schools, addressing pupil well-

being, starting the school day later, flipped

learning, dialogic teaching…

Supporting teachers and schools

Review unproven initiatives:

• More marking works

• More school is all that matters

• Lesson observation improves teaching

Innovation can pay off:

• Integrating technology – texting parents, ABRA reading

• Investing in teacher development – dialogic teaching, formative assessment

• Supporting families – providing free breakfast, Tutor Trust

Metacognition: some promising results

Project Summary Age Effect size Padlocks

Changing

Mindsets

Developing pupils “growth mindset”,

through structured workshops for pupils

9-10 year olds + 2 months

Philosophy for

Children

Weekly teacher-led pupil dialogues, focused

on philosophical issues

8-10 year olds + 2 months

Thinking, Doing,

Talking Science

Training teachers to make science lessons

more practical, creative and challenging

10-11 year olds +3 months

Using Self-

regulation to

improve writing

Whole-class structured writing programme

using memorable experiences as inspiration

11-13 year olds +9 months

Dialogic

teaching

Improving the quality of classroom talk to

develop higher order thinking and articulacy

10-11 year olds + 2 months

Building the pipeline

The most influential studies of the 2000s included:

• Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2004). Working Inside the Black Box

• Johnston, R. and Watson, J. (2005). The effects of synthetic phonics teaching on

reading and spelling attainment a seven year longitudinal study

These two studies made key contributions and their impact is still felt in schools

today.

Black and

Wiliam (2004)

6 schools

24 teachersJohnston and

Watson

(2005)

8 schools

300 pupils

Embedding

Formative

Assessment (2018)

140 schools

25,000 pupils

EEF

Average

study

60 schools

6,000 pupils

Disciplined innovation for a purpose

➢ Brilliant basics for all

➢ Technology for learning

➢ Epigenetics and the

science of life

➢ Non academic skills and wellbeing

“To do things right, we need

first of all to love what we do

and then technique.”Antoni Gaudí

The gap between knowing and doing

Knowing what to do is not enough.

“Knowledge management systems seem to work best when the

people who generate the knowledge are also those who store it,

explain it to others, and coach them as they try to implement the knowledge”

Elmore’s 6th principle:

“We learn to do the work by doing the work.

Not by telling other people to do the work,

not by having done the work at some time in

the past, and not by hiring experts who can

act as proxies for our knowledge about how

to do the work.”

Implementation tends to trump the intervention

• View implementation as a process not an event

• Implementation needs time, especially for the preparation

• Think about sustainability from the outset

• Have a clear, logical and well-specified plan

• Know where to be ‘tight’ and where to be ‘loose’ (faithful

adoption vs intelligent adaption)

• Use high-quality training AND follow on support

Conclusions

1. The new focus on evidence will support informed collective professional debate - it’s not a panacea

2. Education evidence is more accessible than ever before our professional obligation is to start from what we know and reject uninformed fads

3. Delivering education’s contribution to drive social mobility, sustainability and national competitiveness demands the active engagement of all stakeholders

4. Education is being disrupted and will face an increase in the pace of change the prize will go to those who are the best at getting better