Internationally, efforts are being made for educational practice to be research-informed on the grounds that schoolteachers will implement whatever research shows will ‘work’ (e.g. Biesta 2007; 2010). In the UK, policy statements have urged greater use of research to guide teaching, with some commentators calling for a ‘revolution’ in evidence based practice. Scholarly literature (e.g. Weiss 1979; Nutley et al. 2003; Amara, Ouimet & Landry 2004; Ion & Iucu 2014) has suggested that research influences policy and practice in three ways. ‘Instrumental’ use involves the active translation of research knowledge and recommendations into practical action; ‘conceptual’ use means that teachers use research knowledge to develop their thinking although not necessarily their actions, and ‘strategic’ use involves using research knowledge to justify, but not necessarily to change, existing practice. This paper analyses data from two studies in English comprehensive schools, in which teachers were given research reports about teaching gifted and talented students, and supported over a 12-month period, to incorporate findings into practitioner research projects of their own devising. Participant observation data, interviews and teachers’ written reports were analysed in three phases. Analysis revealed that the teachers used research in strategic ways, but only very occasionally. More frequently, their use of research was conceptual, influencing both the content of the teachers’ thinking (providing ideas to think about, focuses for inquiry, challenges to existing thinking and practice, conceptual frameworks and possible actions) and the manner of their thinking (encouraging them to become more willing to experiment, more critical, and to develop their understanding of evidence and ethical awareness). The process is theorised as a ‘long, focused discussion’, to which research contributed a ‘third voice’, in dialogue with individual teachers (the ‘first voice’) and their colleagues (the ‘second voice’). I argue that this model, although it is tentative, provides an appropriately nuanced framework for further investigations of teachers’ use of research evidence.

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