Practical approaches to embedding research in schools: Key learning and reflections from the Research in Schools Learning Community

In 2017, the Department for Education published a report that examined the progress of evidenced-informed teaching in England. The findings suggest that despite limited direct application of research in teachers’ practice, evidence was valued and did inform teacher thinking (Coldwell et al., 2017). Alongside this report, there were other developments that showed that evidence-informed teaching was a paradigm that was here to stay. For example, schools began to appoint people responsible for facilitating and disseminating research within their institutions (for the purposes of this article, we refer to these individuals as Research Leads (RLs), although we acknowledge that a range of titles exists for primarily the same role). In addition, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) became prominent in many schools, specifically as a result of their ‘Teaching and Learning Toolkit’ research findings, and their funding opportunities that enable schools to become research schools, with