The aim of this interactive workshop is to provide an opportunity for participants to discuss issues and challenges associated when developing research findings that both draw from education practises and inform them. We aim to have 2 workshops on the more general theme of how to develop educational knowledge in collaboration with the wider education community (part 1), and how to discuss valid knowledge in ways that spread out across the community (part 2).

This part 1 workshop focuses on the issue pointed out by Berliner (2002), stating that educational research can be considered as “the hardest science of all” (p. 18). Compared to other sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, geology, and so on), educational research is highly dependent on local contexts (e.g., teaching programs, personnel, leadership, student population, etc.), where humans are embedded in complex and dynamic networks of social interaction in the education system. 

Teachers hold with them a wealth of knowledge about their students and what works and doesn’t work with their students. At the same time, they also have a range of decisions that they have to make regarding the best way to teach. Participating in research can benefit the professional development of both the researchers and the participant teachers. 

When browsing research literature of this two-way process, it turns out that the examination of the topic has been scarce. One finds a number of studies of professional development of a teacher, wherein the teacher is subject to researchers’ imposed ideas (meta-study of the topic in Thurlings & den Brok, 2017). One can find articles of the teacher being in a double role when researching their own practices (e.g. Gould, 2008), and even articles of a double role of a researcher, however, that referring to the researcher having another role as a facilitator in action research - again not a learner (Olin, Karlberg-Granlund, & Furu, 2016).

Ultimately, we want our research to reach practitioners, but only when we have concrete findings. Researchers do need to test out their ideas and reflect on their assumptions so that their ideas can be field-tested in the future. On the other hand in a podcast of Dylan Wiliam (https://www.ollielovell.com/errr/dylanwiliam/), it was discussed how for the first half of his career, he was mainly working in academia publishing for other academics. It wasn’t until later in his career that he thought he had gained enough knowledge to work as a consultant and give advice to teachers/schools. He said he wouldn’t feel confident about his advice for teachers without having worked as an academic for many years. If the work is still in progress and hasn't been tested on a larger scale, can or cannot the findings be shared, and collaboratively developed, with the teaching community?

This interactive workshop will draw from a range of research perspectives and expertise from the facilitators and participants. The workshop will stimulate discussion among participants and offer examples and hands-on activities for research designs where both parties develop. It aims to equip NW24 researchers with new tools enabling them to better develop research findings and effective research practices with communities outside academia.

The following mini-presentations (10 minutes each) will open the session: At what point should research findings be translated into practice and in what way? (Dr Tuohilampi & Dr Chan) In what conditions can we discuss work-in-progress; should that never happen; is there a motivation for that? Education researchers have a push to disseminate research findings to practitioners. While education research indeed should ultimately inform teaching practice, we argue that there is value in researchers going through a process of self-reflection and peer review before disseminating the findings. On the other hand, sometimes there is a need to hear the education practitioners during the evolvement of research findings - where do we find the balance between translating research into practice too late or pre-maturely? Professional development for both researchers and teachers - how can teacher knowledge help improve education research practices? (Dr. Haataja) When we go to schools to collect data as researchers, we should think about how we could also benefit the teachers in their work. When possible, we could choose using methods that provide tools for professional development for both teachers and us researchers, such as stimulated recall interviews (e.g. Xu, Widjaja, & Ferguson, 2019). Do we have the courage to provide the research participants agency to affect the way we conduct the data collection and interpret the findings? Classroom vignettes as a tool for connecting mathematics education theory elements with practice contexts (Prof Kuntze) Vignette design, i.e. the creation of representations of practice contexts such as classroom situations (Buchbinder & Kuntze, 2018) can be used as a tool for relating theory elements with situation contexts as they appear in classroom practice. In the European project coReflect@maths (“Digital Support for Teachers' Collaborative Reflection on Mathematics Classroom Situations”) a digital tool for representing classroom situations is under development and aims at supporting pre-service mathematics teacher education and in-service teacher professional development. After the opening presentations, we will have an activating session discussing the experiences of the participants of the topic (20 mins). Next, we will disseminate examples of research designs where a considerable degree of agency has been given to the research examinees. The participants of the workshop will be broken into small groups to work on the activity related to the different examples, with the aim to reflect their own research (30 mins). The final part will summarise the discussion and learning from the workshop (10 mins).

The lack of mutual understanding between education researchers and practitioners contributes to mistrust and maladaptive decision making on both sides. Such issues were connected to nationalism in Europe in the ECER theme in 2020 (European Educational Research Association); this is an even more actual challenge after all the events of 2020. This workshop series (part 1 and 2) serves as a starting point for discussion regarding how best to disseminate, communicate and collaboratively construct research findings based on the current university and funding expectations. We will inform the workshop participants of alternative research designs, such as using vignettes and other designs where the theoretical lens is not pre-defined, classroom situations are acknowledged, and the data can be analysed from very different viewpoints and stimulate dialogues between researchers and practitioners. We will focus on showcasing research designs that can play a facilitating role for making visible how mathematics education theories and findings can help to analyse classroom situations and to respond to professional demands practitioners face. We recognise that the questions and issues raised in the session can be further consulted with teachers and school leaders. Alternative research designs will be founded in the workshop. We aim to make a follow up for the participants later to hear about their experiences about alternative research designs. We would be willing to write a report of the experiment (= workshop + the follow up) either in a journal or, based on what was learned during the project, create an alternative way to inform what was learned. If possible, we would also be willing to write a blog post in EERA blog about the experiment.

Berliner, D. C. (2002). Comment: Educational research: The hardest science of all. Educational Researcher, 31(8), 18–20. Buchbinder, O., & Kuntze, S. (2018). Mathematics Teachers Engaging with Representations of Practice. A Dynamically Evolving Field. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Digital Support for Teachers' Collaborative Reflection on Mathematics Classroom Situations. www.coreflect.eu European Educational Research Association. Conference Theme: Educational Research (Re)connecting Communities. https://eera-ecer.de/previous-ecers/ecer-2020-glasgow/programme/theme/ Gould, M. A. (2008). Teacher as researcher: A paradigm for professional development. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 45(1), 5-7. Olin, A., Karlberg-Granlund, G., & Furu, E. M. (2016). Facilitating democratic professional development: Exploring the double role of being an academic action researcher. Educational Action Research, 24(3), 424-441. Thurlings, M., & den Brok, P. (2017). Learning outcomes of teacher professional development activities: a meta-study. Educational review, 69(5), 554-576. Xu, L., Widjaja, W., & Ferguson, J. (2019). Seeing through the eyes of the teacher? Investigating primary school teachers’ professional noticing through a video-based research methodology. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 42(5), 470–484. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2018.1499016 Podcast https://www.ollielovell.com/errr/dylanwiliam/