This post is the fifth in a series of outcomes from my MA in Education work. In the first post, I looked at why might schools use research? In the second post, I looked at what makes up a teaching and learning culture, and in Part 3, I looked at how people generally view education research in comparison to other factors that shape it. In my fourth post, I looked at how that attitude changes depending on the extrinsic situation you’re in!

In the final analysis blog post, I want to look at how this varies depending on your school’s culture, and explore how intrinsic motivators change the attitudes people have.

By comparison to the extrinsic motivators of Ofsted and exams results, the “culture” of the school was described as the key intrinsic motivator for why research was adopted and used in different settings. It is therefore the key proxy to be used in this section as part of the “intrinsic” motivations analysis; however, it is also inextricably linked to the external drivers as we have just shown in the previous discussion.

In this post, I will outline the relationships that we find, and explore some of internally driven reasons that might help to explain why schools use educational research to build their cultures.

Chart to show the relationship between description of culture, and the participation ratio

First, it’s important to demonstrate the relationship between participation and the school’s teaching & learning culture. This is shown here: with 84% of respondents in a ‘positive culture’ having majority (i.e. greater than 50%) participation from their staff team.

By contrast, negative school cultures only had 23% participation by the majority: and 72% of those schools had less than a quarter of staff involved. Clearly, setting an appropriate culture of professional learning in a school – which was identified as a relatively low factor in the original analysis – has fairly substantial effects within the school itself, endorsing Kraft & Papay (2014)’s analysis of teacher professional development.

Chart to show the relationship between the use of educational research and school culture

In terms of the research question focus on education research, this shows some sharp differences in the extent to which people use educational research in their context.

For the ‘negative’ cultures, it’s only 9% of responses in the two positive categories; with 39% disagreeing, and 42% strongly disagreeing. The ratios are not quite reversed in the ‘positive’ culture, but 17% of this category strongly agree, with a further 41% agreeing. Only 21% had a low use of educational research with strong/disagreement.

Chart to show the relationship between confidence in the use of educational research, and the school culture

A similar trend can be observed in the confidence rating by staff here. 48% of staff in positive school cultures have confidence in their school’s use of educational research, where only 6% of negative school cultures feel the same. 81% of staff in negative school cultures are not confident in their school’s use of research; this figure is only 22% in the positive cultures.

Investigating what drives that confidence, particularly in light of the previously discussed training and experience analysis, and understanding how to derive that dynamic would be a fascinating area for further investigation, and a deeply interesting case study to explore.

Chart to show the relationship between staff interests and the school culture

The wider intrinsic-motivation trend of change is shown again here. One of the potential drivers of the culture ‘fit’ is the extent to which staff feel their personal values and aspirations are aligned with the schools.

Here, we see that there is some evidence that ‘positive’ cultures are more aligned with their staff: 68% of staff think that it’s important to be aligned and cohered between staff interest in research and utility; while that’s only 34% in the negative schools. The mixed cultures sit approximately in between these two extremes, echoing the interesting potential trend that has started to emerge from the other cultural analysis.

Chart to show the relationship between the interests of SLT, and the culture

By contrast, the ‘mixed’ culture is dominated by the feeling that Senior Leaders’ interests are the driving force behind the use of educational research: perhaps reflecting why the culture is described in mixed terms! This shows that in ‘positive’ cultures, this is still fairly high, at 73%, and lowest in the ‘negative’ cultures at 67%. The importance of leadership, both in terms of setting a research agenda, and in terms of building the culture, is echoed in these responses.

Figure 36: Chart to show the relationship between education research and workload, sorted by school culture

The use of educational research to generate better workload for staff (Figure 36) appears to be an important motivator: the positive responses are significantly higher (68%) in the ‘positive cultures’, compared to 45% in the mixed and 42% in the negative culture. Nearly 45% of staff in a ‘negative’ culture feel that this is unimportant; and it seems likely that staff being asked to do more, may well begin to describe their culture in negative terms.

Figure 37: Chart to show the relationship between educational research and teacher development, sorted by school culture

However, perhaps surprisingly, the link connecting education research to other intrinsic factor of “teacher development” is less decisively connected to culture (Figure 37).

Here, for example, we can see that there isn’t much variance between the extent to which people believe in the use of research for personal development; and in fact it’s the ‘negative’ cultures which have the highest proportion of positive responses to this prompt (90%), rather than the 83% of the ‘positive’ cultures. It may well be, as described earlier, that these schools are directing their access to research more significantly, and teachers feel confident in this cultural steer.

Figure 38: Chart to show the relationship between educational research and the intent to improve results for students, sorted by school culture

The relatively tangled motivations and attitudes are demonstrated again by the link between intrinsic and extrinsic factors in Figure 38.

95% of ‘positive’ cultures describe student outcomes as fairly or very important reasons to use education research, a figure that is closely matched by the mixed (79%) and negative cultures (80%). The lack of any negative responses in the mixed culture is suggestive of external pressures as the key driver, but this is only speculative. Similarly, the mixed culture (figure not shown) shows most importance given to external inspectors (64%), closely followed by the negative cultures (62%). While there is slightly less importance given to the inspectorate (56%) by the positive cultures, its’ influence is undeniable even here.

This post is the fourth in a series of outcomes from my MA in Education work. In the first post, I looked at why might schools use research? In the second post, I looked at what makes up a teaching and learning culture, and in Part 3, I looked at how people generally view education research in comparison to other factors that shape it. In this post, I look at how that attitude changes depending on the extrinsic situation you’re in!

It’s a brief discussion – and I welcome all thoughts & ideas from it! It’s highly tentative, and comes with disclaimers and context as described.

Extrinsic Motivator: Examination Results

Having identified “better results” as the most important motivator in the use of educational results from my sample, further analysis is now conducted to explore the dimensions of that experience in creating T&L cultures. All respondents are split according to their self-described results, with the table showing the distribution of these groups. Any respondents who did not answer this question are removed from further analysis in this section.

Description of Results	Respondents	% of Respondents
Significantly better than local schools	72	24.9
A bit better than local schools	86	29.8
About the same as local schools	75	25.9
A bit worse than local schools	39	13.5
Significantly worse than local schools	17	5.9

Table 1: Distribution of responses by self-described categorisation of examination results

Responses are standardised by category, and presented as percentage of the responses in an individual category: while this potentially skews analysis to a greater percentage for the lower categories, it enables easier comparisons to be made between schools with different results.

With the collective response showing the importance of results, the original hypothesis was for the general trends to reflect grading differences; in other words, schools with better results would have better teaching and learning cultures and feel more positively about them, and perhaps by association, their use of educational research.

Figure 19: Chart to show the importance of examination results, sorted by category of exam results

As the primary motivator of collective responses using educational research, the categorical response to the same question is interesting. All responses in the “significantly worse” category, and all but 13% of the “a bit worse” group rate the use of educational research as very or fairly important in driving their school teaching & learning culture.  However, there is no significant disparity between the attitudes: almost all categories show consistently higher than 85% positive relationship with the use of research to generate results.

Figure 20: Chart to show the belief in educational research as a driver of exam results, sorted by category of exam results

However, when we look at the impact of that process – rather than the motivation – there is more of a shift. Figure 20 shows that schools who have better/significantly better results appear to have fewer positive associations with education research: perhaps they can identify other factors to which they can attribute their exams success, whereas schools who identify as “same” or “a bit worse” are dominated by the positive responses. It is interesting that the schools who describe themselves as “significantly worse” do not seem to have full confidence in the impact: 25% of respondents are neutral or disagree that educational research is effective.

Figure 21: Chart to show the importance of using educational research to satisfy inspectors, sorted by exam categories

If we look at the Bernhard et al. (2020) hypothesis which suggests schools use evidence as an anchor (or shield) against inspection judgements, it is interesting to note that there is no single response that says “not at all” in any category. Figure 21 shows the inspection process clearly has some weight, even if exam results are uppermost in responses, and judgements of importance. The highest proportion of responses “for Ofsted” appear to be done in the areas doing a little worse than local schools (75% positive), just ahead of those doing significantly better (68% positive). These two groups are notably above the other three categories; and indeed, the lowest ranked category of exams results appears to be least likely to use educational research to satisfy external inspectors.  A similar result is shown in the relationship between educational research and parental/Governor satisfaction, with the analysis not shown here for brevity. Schools where exam results are significantly worse appear to have limited interest in the utility of research to satisfy external stakeholders; with a majority neutral opinion, and no regard for it as very important. As school exam results improve, the trend is for the views of stakeholders to be more positively regarded in the use of educational research.

Figure 22: Chart to show the relationship between descriptions of teaching and learning culture, sorted by exam categories

It is important to consider whether the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations for utilising educational research overlap. In this section, some of these intrinsic elements are unpicked further.

First, Figure 22 explores the relationship between the description of teaching & learning culture and the exam results. In general, it seems that the culture is described more positively where the exam results are better – potentially through either causal mechanisms of validating the efforts made by staff, or by creating a positive culture leading to good outcomes. There is no evidence to suggest either of these is more likely than the other!

The least positive relationship appears to be in places where the results are described as “a bit worse than local schools” which may well reflect changes and local challenges, or the imposition of a “turn around” culture and the potential tensions therein.

Figure 23: Chart to show attitudes towards educational research and teacher development, sorted by exam category

Figure 23  shows that the reflection of utility of research for personal development similarly shows an unexpected relationship. The highest confidence in personal development through the use of educational research comes in schools whose results are comparable to local counterparts (93% positive), and then there is a decline away from that down to 79% positive in those significantly better, and 77% positive in those significantly worse.

Figure 24: Chart to show attitudes towards educational research and workload, sorted by exam category

Similarly, when comparing an extrinsic factor to an intrinsic one, we see differences between schools, though this time at a different level. Figure 24 suggests that workload appears to be consistent between the top three categories of exam results, and there is little appreciable difference in the responses. However, the schools with worse exam results seem to split considerably, with a larger range of responses. For the “bit worse” category, the workload utility of research is the lowest of all sectors: only 54% positive rated, and the highest “not very important” at 23%. By contrast, the schools describing as “significantly worse” than local schools show the highest positivity for workload impacts: up to 74%, and the smallest neutral and not important ratings of all categories.

It seems that workload and processes are variable, and the pressures of schools in “turn around” status can often be significantly varied. It is beyond the scope and method of this enquiry to explore the experience of these examples; the originally intended method of triangulation interviews might have given further insight to the nature of work in these schools, but it offers a departure from this enquiry.

Figure 25: Chart to show the relationship between exam results and inspection results

Finally, Figure 25 shows the challenge of attempting to disentangle the motivations of extrinsic factors as identified in the limitations section.

There is a clear relationship demonstrated between exam results and inspection outcomes: 89% of the schools with significantly better results are graded as outstanding or good; while only 29% of the schools with significantly worse grades are graded so. Overwhelmingly, those schools are rated as RI (30%) or inadequate (41%). The challenge of correlation vs causality, and the inability of the quantitative data to unpick rationales is demonstrated quite clearly here: we can’t interrogate each enquiry to understand the motivations, and have a triangulation conversation to explore how and why each of these relationships are linked to their context.

This leaves the potential conclusion that the extrinsic motivation of examination results is important, and that schools in the edges of the median position seem to feel this pressure most significantly. They have the most positive attitudes towards the ability of education research, the impact on outcomes and seem to accept the workload consequences!

Extrinsic Motivations: Inspection Judgement

Accepting this co-variability and the potential limitations of the extrinsic factors overlapping, all respondents were split and analysed by their self-described inspection grades, to explore whether there were more obvious trends apparent.

Rating	Number	% of Schools
Outstanding (OFSTED)/Excellent (ISI)	81	28.8%
Good (OFSTED, ISI)	150	53.3%
Requires Improvement (OFSTED)/Sound (ISI)	35	12.5%
Inadequate (OFSTED)/Unsatisfactory (ISI)	15	5.3%
Prefer not to say	23

Table 2: Distribution of Responses by Inspection Category

For the purpose of simplicity, the OFSTED terminology will be used hereafter to describe both categories of school inspection.

The majority (53.3%) of schools self-described as “good”, with about a third as “outstanding” and the rest split between RI and Inadequate status. 23 respondents preferred not to disclose the information, and were discounted from further analysis as a result.

As before, these varying categories are scaled to show standardised comparisons, noting and accepting the potential distortion of oversampling the lower categories.

Figure 26: Chart to show the attitude towards results in creating teaching and learning culture, sorted by inspection category

Building on the previous relationship between results and inspection category, Figure 26 shows that inadequate and RI category schools rate the use of education research as almost entirely to drive better results. While there is minor difference in the positive ratio for good/outstanding schools, there is less criticality: more define it as “fairly important” rather than very important as a reason to engage with education research.

Further analysis (graph not shown) suggests that there is a relatively consistent belief in the efficacy of the utility of educational research, where 65-75% of respondents in all categories describe a positive belief that research drives results. Only a small fraction (less than 5%) believe that there are no impacts on student results. The consistency of purpose, rather than intrinsic belief in the implementation of educational research, tends to suggest that the extrinsic motivation for using it is more significant than the intrinsic judgement of whether it yields the right outcome.

Figure 27: Chart to show the confidence in the use of educational research, sorted by inspection category

This trend appears to be continued through the confidence in research analysis in Figure 27.

While not as stark, there does appear to be a small trend in the confidence in the use of research as employed by the school as an inverse relationship with inspection outcomes. While only 36% of outstanding schools are confident, nearly 54% of the inadequate schools describe their confidence in the school’s use of research positively.

Further evidence (not shown) shows a consistent perception across all categories in the efficacy of research in personal development; suggesting that the use, and the teachers’ role in the process is less important than some of the contextual elements (results, judgement status).

This may well link to the appointments and structural themes identified earlier, including the designation of Research or Evidence Leads, and might be reflected in further study and analysis.

Figure 28: Chart to show the extent of educational research utility, sorted by inspection category

This perhaps connects to the perceived utility of educational research (Figure 28), with inadequate schools again showing a much greater positive response (73%) compared to RI (57%) and outstanding (47%) or good (41%).

The response rate for negatives (disagree/strongly disagree) remains reasonably consistent across all four categories; what changes appears to primarily be the extent to which people have “neutral” opinions on this question: from 24% neutral in a good category, through to none in the inadequate.

This may be an interesting result to explore further; but could also be a limit of the comparatively small sample size of the inadequate category.

Figure 29: Chart to show the relationship between teaching and learning culture and the satisfaction of external inspectors, sorted by inspection category

The previous link between exam results and external stakeholders is reinforced through further analysis of Figure 29, and a similar pattern found. Again, not a single respondent believed that there was no impact of external inspectors on the use of research.

There is little difference between the outstanding/good schools in their rationale relative to external inspectors, and they are fairly close to the inadequate schools, too (55% important in the outstanding/good vs 40% important in the inadequate category).

However, the schools ‘on the margin’ of requires improvement appear to be most driven by the OFSTED rationale: with 77% of respondents believing that the extrinsic inspection rational was fairly or very important.  A similar trend to the exam results is shown in the satisfaction of parents and governors (data not shown here). All but the ‘inadequate’ category showed relatively consistent attitudes to the use of research to satisfy parents. Inadequate schools regard the use of research to satisfy parents as relatively unimportant: 42% as “not very important” and 50% as neutral.

In terms of extrinsic motivators, then, it seems that Ofsted and results are inextricably linked, and are the key external drivers of the use of educational research in schools.

Figure 30: Chart to show the extent to which participants believe in the impact of education research on workload, sorted by inspection category.

Of the potential variables, the most significantly demonstrated intrinsic motivation for schools is the efficacy of education research in the ability to improve workload for teachers.

Although some observable disparities exist (Figure 30), there is some consensus across the three top categories. Inadequate schools stand out again, as the exception to the wider trend: with a very divided response (no neutral opinions), and a 70:30 split in terms of in favour vs disagreement.

The interpretations of the data sorted by external judgement and exam results would appear to support the conclusion that educational research is used to satisfy extrinsic motivation, and agree with Bernhard et al. (2020)’s hypothesis of research being used as a “shield” for judgements by schools in the two lower categories. We see similar levels of confidence and understanding about the efficacy of research and how it translates in to impact, but a greater utilisation of educational research as a mechanism to build teaching and learning cultures in schools.

It would be interesting to explore the extent to which these schools also have a strong leadership team, or an appointed “Teaching and Learning Lead”, because the relatively high confidence in how educational research is being interpreted and applied to setting does not relate to the prior training and experiential questions. This might generate a proxy of a research-informed culture, in which participants are presented with research through the prism of someone else’s leadership or experience. They are confident in the selection of material they are being presented with, and have all read the same papers/attended the same sessions, but may perhaps be unaware of the wider limitations, complexities and debates in the field – which

However, it could also be argued that in situations of high extrinsic need (poor exam results, low inspection status), the need to prioritise and focus on a specific outcome or target addressing one (or both) of these needs might well over-ride the wider cultural development of schools. It is possible that schools with a single focus use the research as a lever to move that focus, and this reduces other extraneous and plural perspectives in the day to day teaching. This is an equally plausible explanation of the analysis; which, without further triangulation research is uncertain.

The extrinsic motivations show real drivers of the use of educational research, and of the creation of teaching and learning cultures. However, to address the final research question, it is also important to consider intrinsic motivational factors.

This post is the third in a series of outcomes from my MA in Education work. It’s a brief discussion – and I welcome all thoughts & ideas from it! It’s highly tentative, and comes with disclaimers and context as described.

Having shown some analysis of how teaching and learning cultures are created, and explored some of the different structural components, this section of analysis now turns to focus on the relative attitudes to the use of educational research.

Reflecting on the research questions, some of this analysis will be further broken down by intrinsic and extrinsic variables: focusing on the self-described Ofsted/ISI judgement, the perception of school’s exam results, and the self-described teaching & learning culture of the school. While all of these are potential insights into the motivations and processes, there is the caveat that they are all self-described, and without triangulation, the significance and veracity of these results are potentially limited to inferences only.

First, respondents were asked their relative opinions on different statements about the nature of educational research, and able to offer choices within a Likert scale. A summary is shown here. The highest positive responses are associated with intrinsic judgements of self: I am confident in using research; I enjoy engagement with education research, I would like to do more, and it makes me a better teacher, which are the top four positive responses overall. The context of the study – self-selected via networks – is very likely to cause a skew towards this kind of teacher in the first instance; but it is also likely that a modified version of halo effect (presenting oneself in the best light) is part of the explanation of this particularly high intrinsic response. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast to the experience and training of participants; most of whom have not had post-graduate contact with research approaches outside of their subject (only 11.25% have postgraduate qualifications in education research), show a considerable range of confidences in their research training, and the majority of whom will have trained via a PGCE route way. Further statements (e.g. we use research a lot) may indicate the role of SLE/ELE in schools as the mediator of this research in to teaching practice.

In terms of the purpose of research, the highest response is the extrinsic motivator of student results, with a dominant positive outcome, and small deviation. Whilst workload generates some positive responses, it also has perhaps the highest spread of outcomes, with a significant disagreement and neutrality compared to other factors.

Chart to show opinions on education research, aggregated across all responses

By contrast, the relative importance of various components in the construction of teaching and learning culture are specifically interrogated. The dominant response is to get better results for students (extrinsic), with high positive response, and almost no neutral/negative. The next responses are the interests of Senior Leaders, closely followed by the use of educational research, the experience levels and interests of staff (intrinsic), and the need to satisfy external inspectors (extrinsic). Other external motivators (e.g. parents and governors) show little positive response, but a relatively clustered distribution, while the greatest range of response appears to be over the complex issue of workload (intrinsic).

Chart to show opinions on the relative importance of different factors in the construction of teaching and learning culture, aggregated across all responses

On reflection, I think the “interest of Senior Leaders” is awkwardly worded: and could well encompass their motivation/drive to create a culture, as well as their personal preferences on the other hand. These have clearly different connotations, but cannot now be easily disentangled from the data that is presented here. Given the high importance of “school culture” in the drivers of positive engagement, it seems likely that at least some respondents have answered this question in this way, too.

Having given an initial indicator of the relative importance of education research by comparison to other factors, it seems to be engaging with a range of cultural contexts. It’s interesting to explore how research is used differently in different types of school, by either intrinsic motivation factors (e.g. the culture of the school, intent to develop staff or retain staff through workload management) or extrinsic motivation factors (results, external judgement by inspectors, responses to stakeholder perceptions).

In the next section of analysis, I explore some of these questions broken down by category of motivation, to investigate the extent to which we can see this in the data.