Week 4 - LEADERSHIP - Research Informed Leadership

Week 4 - Research Informed Leadership (*My Comments/Reflections)

Research-informed teaching improves student learning outcomes and enriches the education experience.

Developing Research Informed Practice

1. Develop a personal commitment to review research to determine what is likely to works best and to determine what ‘best-practice’ models exist.
2. Encourage your peers to work with you to empower a collective of teachers who collectively participate in research and literature reviews.
3. Disseminate information and research findings with your students and your peers to raise awareness of research informed practice and decisions in your school.
4. Encourage your students to be reflective of their actions and decisions so that they learn to self critique and take greater responsibility for their learning outcomes.
5. Develop a class culture of referring to credible sources of data and let the class develop a sound understanding of how to evaluate data/content sources.
6. Be a consumer and promoter of evidence
7. Pose questions without pre-determined answers or expectations. Identify ways to enhance a commitment to investigation.

Leading Research Groups / Projects

The article Good Practice in Leading and Supporting a Research Team (Freeman, Reiss & MacDonald, 2013) from the University of London, outlines (on page 9) some ideas about leading a team of researchers. What is the relationship between leadership and research? What are the similarities and differences?

Similarities  Need to know team
Need to respect the individuals    
Feedback and recognition for work well done.
Delegation
Managing relationships
Awareness of issues that may impact on the job.
Problem solvers
Taking responsibility of the politics
Team ApproachDifferences

Harder to build relationships in short term contracts in research
Take a lot for granted in teaching - people should know what to do
Delegation can be hit and miss
Research leader has to think about the well being of their individual due to being away from home
Emotional investment in teaching - engagement with students, parents other teachers.
Teaching leaders are users of research, research leaders are gathers of research.

Research informed leadership

Discussion around the reading

Research-Informed Teaching of Adults: A Worthy Alternative to Old Habits and Hearsay? Author: John Benseman Unitec Department of Education

There are so many different researchers out there.
Important for us as teachers and leaders to provide solid practice based on research (important to have different research correlation) 

Education is different to other organisation - hard to run trials like you do in medicine.
Educators need to take into account the variables that may occur - sometimes as teachers we need to jump in and try something out.

Teachers need to be the people doing the active research

Research informed practice is an important aspect of leadership, since research provides insights both into leadership itself and the activities you are leading.

The document by Benseman (2013) from Unitec on Research Informed Teaching also provides some useful ideas for discussion. Research can be relevant to the classroom in a number of ways; research-led teaching, which is when the curriculum is based on research interests of teachers, research-oriented teaching, where the process of learning is as important as the content, research based teaching, where the curriculum is based on inquiry-based activities, and research informed teaching, which consciously draws on the teaching and learning process (Benseman, 2013). It is research informed teaching which is our main focus on this course.

How many of these educational researchers are you aware of?

McGuirk's (2000) study found that "few of those [teachers] surveyed had any familiarity with major thinkers, writers or researchers in the field" (as cited in Benseman, 2013 ,p. 3). So how many of these researchers do you recognise? Fill in the Google Form at this address: tinyurl.com/TMLEdResearch (in class)

Seymour Papert
Jean Piaget
John Dewey

An interesting example of how we might be misled by those who claim to be researchers is the famous Dr Fox lecture, available in this week's media

Dr Fox was an actor who had been trained up the day before.
There is so much out there that is portrayed as valued research but it's not.
Jargon can confuse - makes it sound right.

It can be so much harder to critique research as there is so much out there. 

How useful is research to you?

Benseman (2013) writes, "Researchers argue that practitioners aren’t aware of research findings or don’t understand them, while practitioners retort that researchers don’t understand their everyday realities or that their findings are not readily available and when they are, are cloaked in mystique and obtuseness" (p. 13). We hope that you will regard yourselves as practitioner-researchers and see value for your pratice in undertaking applied research as part of this programme.

Knowledge is adaptive

"Early in the 17th century, two astronomers competed to describe the nature of our solar system. Galileo built a telescope and found new planets and moons. Francesco Sizi ridiculed Galileo’s findings. There must be only seven planets, Sizi said. After all, there are seven windows in the head—two nostrils, two ears, two eyes, and a mouth. There are seven known metals. There are seven days in a week, and they are already named after the seven known planets. If we increase the number of planets, he said, the whole system falls apart. Finally, Sizi claimed, these so-called satellites being discovered by Galileo were invisible to the eye. He concluded they must have no influence on the Earth and, therefore, do not exist (National Institute for Literacy, 2010, p. 2)." (as cited in Benseman, 2013. p.15)

Knowledge is adaptive, as Benseman (2013) states "what is self-evident today is tomorrow’s fallacy or tale of ridicule" (p. 15). In sum, the quality of Research informed teaching (RIT) evidence is ensured by accessing peer-reviewed literature "Although the research evidence is rarely clear-cut or irrefutable, it does provide a sturdier platform to base our teaching than the alternatives of old habits and hearsay” (p. 15).

Knowledge is adaptive! Teachers need to be adaptive

Acknowledging your sources

You must acknowledge what you have read in order to avoid plagiarism, and so that:

• readers of your work can find the original sources you used
• the authors of the original sources you used are given credit for their work
• your own research and ideas are clearly evident and you are given credit for your work
• your work has credibility in the larger realm of scholarly knowledge

Author
Title
Publication Date
Place of publication
Journal title

Volume and Issue Number

APA - referencing system used by Unitec

There are two parts to acknowledging another's work within your own:

• You use an in text citation in the main body of your work that has some brief information about the source (Author(s), 2015).
• You provide the complete information about the source at the end of your work in the form of a list of references or bibliography. 

(Unitec, 2017).

Unitec Library

Task
Find at least peer-reviewed article and one e-book relating to your digital 1 assignment problems or solutions

The Unitec library is at http://library.unitec.ac.nz. It provides a source for many peer-reviewed articles and e-books that will relate to your DIGITAL 1 assignment problems or solutions. When searching, remember to test different search (word) combinations

Make sure you can open and read the articles and ebooks online. If you have tried several and cannot download anything then contact Unitec IMS Support (askims@unitec.ac.nz)

• Find tools that will help you to reference those in your Reference list in APA style - libguides.unitec.ac.nz/apareferencing
• Learn how to download the PDF version of articles

Google Scholar

To set up the link between Google Scholar and the Unitec Library

• Go to Google Scholar
• Click ‘settings’ -> ‘library links’, search for ‘unitec’, check the box and save

Example of using the link

• In Google Scholar, search for ‘digital collaborative learning’
• Scroll down the results to find the article ‘Learning, teaching, and scholarship in a digital age Web 2.0 and classroom research’
• Click on the link to the right - ‘full-text at Unitec’ then download the PDF from the library (if you don’t have library access, use the other link

There are more detailed instructions on the library web page http://library.unitec.ac.nz/help/google-scholar.htm

Reference / Citation Management Tools

Tools like the ones listed below are very useful for managing your references and generating citations. They all have different features (and frustrations!). Try a few out and find one that works for you. Recommend your favourites and user tips on the G+ community.

Mendeley works online and with a local client. As well as storing references and geberating citiations, you can share reading lists, references and full-text articles with your network, publicly or privately. Create groups to tackle research assignments, share feedback and write papers with your collaborators. It has a special Plugin for Microsoft Word and integrates well with Chrome.

Zotero is simlar to Mendeley with a local client application as well as working in the browser, and is designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. It allows you to share collections and work closely with colleagues on a project. It integrates well with Firefox.

EEWOWW replaces the old Wizfolio on-line reference manager. Unlike Mendeley and Zotero it does not need a local client application and runs entirely in the cloud. 

Citeulike has automated article recommendations and allows you to share references with your peers.

Docear This video explains how Docear is used. You are able to create categories, highlight and pin notes on your electronic pdfs as well as draft and write your own documents which can be exported to Word.

Citethisforme can be downloaded as an app via google play. Scan book and journal barcodes using your phone’s camera to automatically generate a citation. Sync with your account to manage your bibliographies on the go.

Unitec currently uses EndNote X7 which can be installed on all student PCs if you personally attend Unitec to get this installed due to licensing agreements. Copies of the programs for PCs and Macs can be borrowed from all 4 library branches for use with your own computers.

Example of video referencing

You may also wish to view Dr David Parsons' video on Citing and Referencing Sources in a Video Assignment

Reference List

Benseman, J. (2013). Research-Informed Teaching of Adults: A Worthy Alternative to Old Habits and Hearsay?. Unitec ePress. Number 2. Retrieved from http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress/index.php/research-informed-teaching-of-adults-a-worthy-alternative-to-old-habits-and-hearsay/

Freeman, R., Reiss, M. & MacDonald, J. (2013). Good Practice in Leading and Supporting a Research Team: A Guide for Research Staff and Project Managers. University of London Institute of Education. Retrieved from https://ioersa.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/good-pr...

Unitec. (2017). APA 6th referencing. Retrieved from http://libguides.unitec.ac.nz/apareferencing/introduction