And now for the first in a new series of blogs where we ask teachers about their experiences of accessing and using research. We are thrilled that our first teacher-chat is with Mark Enser.

Mark is a key stage 3 geography teacher, Head of Geography, and Research Lead at Heathfield Community College in East Sussex.
He tweets @EnserMark and blogs at www.teachreal.wordpress.com.
His first book, Making Every Geography Lesson Count, is soon to be published by Crown House.

Mark, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions. Firstly, how do you keep up-to-date with the latest education research?

It is very difficult to keep up to date as there is so much being produced and so much of variable quality and of variable practical use. I am a member of The Chartered College of Teachers and have found Impact to be very useful and the access to academic articles online invaluable.

I also attend education conference such as ResearchEd and read books on education. I follow up the references in footnotes and check out the original research for myself. I also make use of the EEF toolkit and again follow up by reading the research they have used. TES (formally Times Educational Supplement) are also running more and more articles about education research and Jon Severs Pedagogy Podcast in which he interviews academics is excellent.

Is it important to you whether the research uses particular methods (eg neuroscience, classroom-based)?

I need to be able to see an application for the research in a classroom setting but this doesn’t mean the research has to have come from a classroom. I think findings from neuroscience can be very useful to teachers and it is something I wish my training and early-career CPD had focused on more.

Could you tell us how research has influenced your teaching?

The main way that research has influenced by teaching is to simplify what I do. It has allowed me to cut out a lot of the complications that made my teaching less effective and efficient. I no longer try to plan activities to take into account different learning styles or try to differentiate learning objectives. I started to teach at a time in the early 00’s when it felt that a lot of what we did in the classroom was done to please various outside observers and to meet their criteria for what a good lesson would look like. Reading research has given me the ability and confidence to strip away a lot of the bad practice I was trained in.

Reading and applying research has helped me to make my explanations more memorable and I use principles of dual coding to help support working memory. I also use more structured retrieval practice to make sure that pupils are recalling material from much earlier in the course and not assuming that because they have done it they have learnt it.

What do you think researchers should focus on next (i.e. what are the gaps in our understanding, from a teacher’s perspective?)?

I would interesting in seeing more research into high and low achieving pupils and understanding more about the difference. When does the gap between them begin, what causes it, and what can be done to close it?

I would also like to see more work done on the transition between key stages. It feels as though a lot of what was learnt at primary school is unavailable to pupils when they arrive in a new setting. I hear from teachers in further and higher education that much is the same for pupils leaving secondary school. I think anything that can improve retention between schools could lead to a dramatic improvement in education. We just need to know what those thing are!

Do you have any suggestions of how communication and collaboration could be improved between teachers and education researchers?

The first issue is access. Too much research is expensive to access. If we want an informed profession it needs to be free to teachers.

Secondly, we need to find a way of bringing useful research into schools. There is a huge amount out there and teachers at the chalk face don’t have the time to sift through it and search for the pearls. Research leads in schools can help with this as they can be given the time and space to do this searching and disseminating. It would be useful if researchers can get access to the contact details of research leads to improve communication.

Thirdly, teachers need to be given time for this communication and collaboration with researchers. A teacher’s time is expensive and with crushing real time funding cuts coming from central government it is hard to see how many schools are going to manage to give staff the time to sit and read and discuss.

It would be useful if education researchers got on twitter and started blogging and discussing their work informally with teachers. Although they may initially be talking to a small group of the profession, it will help to get their work out there more widely.

Please could you describe a research-informed idea that you feel has had a positive impact in your classroom, so that others could try it as well if they feel it’s relevant. 

Retrieval practice has made a huge difference to my pupil’s ability to retain information to use. I usually start a lesson with a short quiz and ensure that the questions go back over several previous topic. This means that pupils are having to think back and bring something back into their working memory, making recall in the future easier. However, I also make sure that the questions relate to the work they are about to do. This helps to make this new learning’s place in their schema more explicit and helps to avoid the misconceptions that arise when new learning is de-coupled from what has gone before.

Although I keep the quizzes low stakes, I do go through the questions and ask for a hand-up for who got that question right. I allows me to quickly ascertain any gaps in their knowledge and anything that might need re-teaching before I move on.

Thank you very much for your time! 

Annie Brookman-Byrne is a final year PhD student at the Centre for Educational Neuroscience, at Birkbeck, University of London. She has kindly taken a break from writing her thesis to chat to us about the work she does, and about educational neuroscience more generally.

Annie summarises her research in this short video:

Hi Annie

I’d like to start off by finding out a bit about how you came to be a PhD student in the field of educational neuroscience. What made you decide to study that particular subject?

I became interested in educational neuroscience as a result of conducting research in both psychology and education departments. I loved aspects of both environments and felt that educational neuroscience was the perfect way to combine the two. Educational neuroscience takes a scientific approach to education, which seemed like a great way of conducting psychology research with application to the real world. Of course there is much more to the science of education than psychology, so it’s also fascinating to think about the role of other disciplines within education (such as genetics or learning technologies), and educational neuroscience considers all of these disciplines.

Another appealing aspect of this field is that researchers share a common goal of improving teaching and learning, so it really feels like everyone is working together to see how best to achieve that goal. Educational neuroscience is more than just research: there are lots of resource-sharing and public engagement activities that aim to bring researchers closer to educators and learners. These efforts are essential in making sure the latest findings are fed back to have the greatest impact.

Why do you think educational neuroscience, generally, is an important area of research?

Teachers have a wealth of knowledge about different techniques that work in the classroom, but we don’t necessarily know why they work. One of the aims of educational neuroscience is to get to grips with why different strategies work; if we can find out the science behind these successful techniques then we may be able to use that knowledge to make them even more successful. Equally, there may be techniques that work but not for the reasons we think they do, so we may be able to find a way of streamlining them. And of course, finding out more about the science behind learning enables us to try out new techniques.

All of this is important in helping students to be more successful learners. This doesn’t necessarily mean achieving higher grades, but may mean learning in a way that is more enjoyable, less anxiety-inducing, and more efficient. Many researchers are interested in individual differences in learning. By finding out more about how different people learn, it is hoped that learning experiences can be better tailored to give everyone the best possible chance in school, including those who struggle to learn.

What are the particular challenges you’ve encountered during your research?

Anyone who conducts research in schools will tell you that recruitment is a challenge, and I’m no different! It can be difficult to find schools with the time and resources to let a researcher in to see a large number of children one at a time over the course of a few weeks. Even with a very enthusiastic school, the parents need to give consent, and children need to remember to bring back their consent forms. It can be a long process! Nonetheless, I have been lucky enough to work with teachers who are fascinated in the research and keen to help out—they have made a huge difference.

For me, another challenge has been developing the language to explain my research to teachers and students. Over the course of my PhD I have spoken to teachers about my research through focus groups, teacher training day talks, and conferences. I have also given a number of talks to groups of students. This has been a challenge because I have had to think hard about the best way of explaining my research to different groups who are not already familiar with the background. I have adapted the language I’ve used based on the feedback I’ve received, and now feel much more comfortable in explaining what my research is all about and why it’s important.

And what positive experiences or opportunities have you had when carrying out your research studies?

Speaking to teachers and students have been positive experiences, just a little nerve-wracking at times! I also had a really great time collaborating with teachers to design a series of small-scale classroom-based studies. To me this felt like what educational neuroscience is all about—working with teachers to find a research question of common interest and conducting the research together.

You are also very busy with creating opportunities for educationalists and researchers to communicate and share ideas. Can you tell us a bit about these projects, and why you consider them to be important?

I am a coordinator for the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) special interest group on neuroscience and education, also known as SIG 22. I worked with Lia Commissar from the Wellcome Trust to put on the biennial SIG 22 conference in June which was a great chance to bring together educators and researchers. In addition to the usual conference activities like talks and poster sessions, we also had an “open space” event, where anyone could suggest a topic to discuss, and small groups got together to talk about them. I am looking forward to seeing what comes of those discussions—initial feedback was positive and suggested that some new ideas for projects came from discussions between researchers and educators.

I also spent January to June this year working with the team behind “I’m A Scientist” to put on an online event called the Learning Zone to connect teachers and researchers. The website hosted content for teachers that outlined the latest science in this field. Educators and researchers also chatted in the zone which was a great opportunity for sharing of expertise in both directions.

These kinds of activities that bring together teachers and researchers are so important because they help to build a common language. Educators need to understand what researchers are working on, and what the latest scientific findings are. It’s also important to communicate to teachers what the science hasn’ttold us yet, and where findings reported in the media may be misleading. Researchers need to understand what teachers already know, and what teachers want to know. This helps drives the research in a direction of interest to teachers, and also helps researchers frame their engagement activities, based on what teachers already know.

Congratulations on your recent ‘Exceptional Trainee’ award from IMBES (International Mind, Brain, and Education Society) – very well-deserved. In your experience, do you think there are differences in the study of educational neuroscience / mind, brain, and education between the UK and USA?

The main difference I have come across between the UK and USA is simply the different term used to describe the field. While it is typically called educational neuroscience in the UK, it is usually called mind, brain, and education (or MBE) in the US. My understanding is that this does not reflect any differences in the type of research conducted, but may alter the public perception of the field. I don’t know why this difference emerged, and I have heard it suggested that MBE better reflects the nature of the field, which is not simply education and neuroscience. A common criticism of the field is that education and neuroscience are too far removed for neuroscience to have anything useful to offer education. Perhaps if we called it MBE in the UK, those not in the field would have a better understanding that it is not simply about connecting education and neuroscience. However, now that educational neuroscience has gained some prominence in the UK, the term may be here to stay!

And finally, what do you consider to be the most important ‘next steps’ for educational neuroscience, and the science of learning?

This is said time and again but communication and collaboration between educators and researchers is essential. I hope to see more networks that allow for this to happen, ensuring that both parties are given the time and resources needed to make fruitful collaborations. There has been a real rise in the sharing of information and I also hope to see more of this, and I think we need to get creative in sharing the latest science in accessible and interesting ways. Finally, my view is that as a field we need to take steps to ensure that research is replicated, and that we are carefully considering issues of sample size and power in study design. Pre-registration of studies is becoming a widely used way of reporting psychological research, whereby study design and analysis is registered and sometimes peer reviewed prior to the data collection. This ensures that researchers are not biased in their analysis. In order to ensure we are making robust claims about science I think our field should follow suit. The way in which students learn and are taught has lasting impact so it’s important that we make sure decisions related to their learning are based on the best possible scientific evidence.

Thanks very much Annie – we wish you all the best with your future research!

Annie can be contacted on abrook07@mail.bbk.ac.uk and via Twitter @abrookmanbyrne

Annie regularly writes blog posts for:

• Blog on Learning and Development (BOLD)
• NPJ Science of Learning community
• Her own website

Her recent papers include:

• Inhibitory control and counterintuitive science and maths reasoning in adolescence, written with her PhD supervisors Dr Iroise Dumontheil, Professor Denis Mareschal, and Professor Andy Tolmie
• Neuroscience, psychology, and education: Emerging links, written for teachers with Professor Michael Thomas
• IMBES Pre-conference: Using insight from research to improve education, written with Lia Commissar from the Wellcome Trust

In this week’s blog, Dr. Sam Wass from University of East London tells us about his research into socio-economic status and stress, and how this relates to teaching and learning.

What is the focus of your research?

At the moment I am working mainly on my ESRC fellowship, which looks at how the early living environment affects stress and concentration abilities in babies growing up in socio-economically challenged households. We know that children from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to develop mental health problems later in life, and we think that early-life stress might cause this. But we understand very little about what exactly causes stress in infants. The project is looking at two areas – environmental noise (how physically noisy the living environment is) and stress contagion (how our stress levels are influenced by people around us).

What led you to this area of research? 

There is a personal story behind this. A few years ago, my sister wanted to get two of her children into a good primary school that had a small catchment area – so she moved with her partner and her four children into a much smaller flat, that was all they could afford in the area. The effect on the children of moving from a more spacious to a much more cramped living space was, all the family felt, enormous – it seemed to affect their general stress levels, even when they weren’t at home, and their concentration. It was that that got me interested – because there is very little formal research in this area.

Could you summarise your findings?

It’s too early to know what our main findings are – we’re still collecting the data. But, based on other research, it may be that the picture that emerges is more complex than a simple case that ‘stress/noise is bad’. One big theory doing the rounds in developmental psychology at the moment is the orchids/dandelions theory – that some children (‘orchid children’) are more naturally sensitive, which makes them more sensitive to ‘bad’ things, such as background noise, but also makes them more sensitive when interesting/ memorable learning events happen. So being more sensitive is a double-edged sword. It may be that our findings fit in with this theory.

What do you think this means for teachers in the classroom?

I think there is a tonne of useful material for teachers here. First, the idea that the external environment – how noisy, chaotic and cluttered things are – can affect children’s levels of physiological stress – which, in turn, can affect their concentration. Second, the idea that some children might be more sensitive to this than others. There is also the idea of ‘stress contagion’ – that my own levels of physiological stress are affected by the people around me. And finally, the idea that not all stress is bad.

Could you give one tip to teachers, based on your work?

I think – ‘imagine what the world feels like from the child’s point of view’. Children naturally experience more intense mood swings than adults. As adults we have been highly trained at filtering out background distractions – so much so that we hardly notice them sometimes – but children find this much harder. Being a little child often feels like being a speedboat with a very powerful engine and a small rudder – you might know where you want to go but spin off uncontrollably in a different direction. And understanding this can help, I think, in how we interact with young children.

You can find out more about Sam’s work here: https://www.uel.ac.uk/staff/w/sam-wass

For the second in our series of headteacher interviews, we are very pleased to introduce Julia Harrington, Head of Queen Anne’s School and Founder of BrainCanDo https://braincando.com/ to share her thoughts on educational neuroscience.

What does educational neuroscience mean to you?

The developments in neuroscience in the last two decades have given us a much improved understanding of the human brain and its functions, albeit the brain is still very much a mystery!  I believe that this greater knowledge and understanding has direct and indirect applications for the educational sector which, after all, is based in the ‘engine room’ of so many young brains, working to help them develop to flourish both in terms of mental health and their learning and development. Not to have a knowledge and understanding of this is not just a missed opportunity, it is arguably at best bad practice and at worst downright negligent!

How do you keep up to date with the latest research?

At BrainCanDo we are involved in active research with our university partners. I also keep up to date through journals, conferences, websites which I seek out on this topic. I would particularly recommend the journal Impact [produced by the Chartered College of Teachers] which is excellent.

How has neuroscience understanding helped in your school?

We have written our own Teacher’s Handbook.  It covers topics such as memory, stress, music and the brain, biological rhythms and flipped learning.   This explains the neuroscience and psychology behind these areas and then gives ideas and guidance on how to apply in the classroom.   Our teachers also conduct their own small scale research through Learning Study Groups, analysing their findings and feeding back to students and staff.

How do you get students and teachers involved?

Firstly through making sure that BrainCanDo is firmly rooted in all of our practices and training for our staff. The Handbook has helped with this, but it is supported by inset training and work around sharing good practice.  The students are also given training throughout the year on different strategies for learning and mental health and how this relates to understanding the brain. This is delivered by our in-house team.  We also talk about brain function at assemblies, tutor sessions etc.

Are there areas where you think the research should focus next?

We are continuing with our work on music and the brain, looking at ‘character’ education and what this actually means and links to brain function/psychological belief systems/emotional contagion and regulation. I would like to see more work on education for adolescents on emotion regulation feeding into positive mental health.