Applying educational theory to practice: Balancing ‘truth’ and ‘usefulness’

ROBERT CAUDWELL, CO-FOUNDER, PENROSE EDUCATION, UK

Introduction

A theory is a system of concepts that explain and/or describe the object of study in a given area of research or study.

Perry and Morris, 2023, p. 22

Often, those engaged in the application or translation of educational theory into practice emphasise the importance of establishing the ‘usefulness’ of these theoretical claims and their associated research evidence. In their book What Does This Look Like in the Classroom? (2017), Hendrick and Macpherson argue that ‘for education research to have an impact where it matters most, it should be accessible, relevant and above all practicable’ (p. 17). A general example of this same sentiment can be seen in the work of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), who (in their own words) seek to ‘provide high quality information about what is likely to be beneficial… for what might work in your context’ (EEF, 2024). If educational theory and research are to have influential roles in classrooms and schools, it is reasonable for teachers and school leaders to expect discernible, useful benefits.

Distinguishing between what is ‘true’ and what is ‘useful’

Scientists seek to describe the world as it is. Educators, in contrast, don’t seek to describe what happens, but to make something happen.

Willingham, 2017, p. 187

However, one key challenge faced by researchers and teachers hoping to work together is that their respective roles have different goals and priorities. Willingham offers a succinct summary of this difference in the quotation above. While teachers and school leaders will prioritise identifying (and implementing) what is useful, educational researchers are generally focused on exploring what is, or at least might be, true.

This distinction is unproblematic when dealing with things that are both true and useful. For many, the findings from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) can fall into this category – where pupils and/or schools are randomly allocated to either receive a particular treatment/intervention or form part of the control/comparison group. If, for example, a classroom intervention has been tested using an RCT process, the results can contain information about both the potential ‘truth’ of the theory underpinning the experimental design and the potential ‘usefulness’ of the intervention to practitioners (Neelen and Kirschner, 2020). Here, both processes described by Willingham – describing and changing something – are largely aligned.

However, the relationship between researchers and teachers becomes considerably more complicated when connections between what is true and what is useful are unclear, contested or absent. There are many things that can be researched within the broad field of ‘education’ that might not be immediately useful to the average classroom teacher – for example, because the scope of study is narrow or the subject of study is not something easily replicable (Neelen and Kirschner, 2020). There are also always going to be practices that a teacher or school leader has discovered to be useful but which have not yet been subjected to rigorous academic evaluation – ‘research can only tell you what was, not what could be’ (Wiliam, 2015).

The pursuit of truth and usefulness

[D]espite the fact that both practical capabilities and theoretical understanding are essential for effective teaching, they do not always align neatly with one another.

Burn et al., 2023, p. 15

The complicated relationship between truth and usefulness is shaped by the reality that definitively determining what is ‘true’ in a social science is always difficult and arguably impossible (Coe, 2017). In their recent book, Perry and Morris outline some of the challenges of establishing ‘truth’ in educational research (2023):

• The complexity of classroom environments, with all of the possible internal and external variables, makes understanding effectiveness and establishing causal relationships between activity and outcomes challenging (for example, RCTs cannot help to answer complex questions, i.e. those involving multiple interdependent variables that cannot be randomly controlled for) 
• The variability of classroom environments makes it easier (not necessarily easy!) to show that something is true in a specific context at a specific time, and considerably more difficult to make claims that something is generally true in all classrooms, with all students at all times 
• The importance of educational outcomes (to students, parents, teachers, school leaders, governments and society) often introduces emotional, ethical and political influences and biases into the search for what is ‘true’.

In addition to these significant challenges in establishing what is ‘true’, there are similar barriers to identifying what is ‘useful’. You need only participate in (or safely spectate during) an online debate about any given teaching practice to know that what one teacher has found incredibly useful may be worthless to another. There are many reasons for this, including:

• The capacity for a teacher or leader to make changes to their practice will also influence how useful ideas are. If we give a practitioner 30 ‘useful’ things to try all at once, the combined impact of this advice could easily overwhelm, demotivate and damage the confidence of the poor recipient – which is very unlikely to be useful (Burn et al., 2015).
• The importance in understanding (and believing) why specific practices are worth trying will inevitably influence whether a teacher will implement this practice authentically and well – ‘knowing how to do something is not enough to understand it. Learners also need to know why something is being done.’ (Neelen and Kirschner, 2020, p. 215)

• The lack of a universal, agreed understanding of what the purpose and goals of education are often makes agreeing what is ‘useful’ impossible – there is little point in trying to persuade a practitioner of a solution’s usefulness if it is to address a problem that they do not recognise that they have (Philpott, 2014).

Taken together, the challenges faced by anyone hoping to identify ‘truth’ or ‘usefulness’ in education are daunting. It is no surprise, then, that determining how researchers and practitioners should work together in describing and shaping the educational world is also far from straightforward. How can practitioners and researchers support each other while pursuing such complex (and different) goals?

Accepting, embracing and navigating complexity

In reality, the persona of the teacher and the dynamic they create with the students in their charge goes well beyond… shallow caricatures. The world of the classroom is complex and nuanced in ways that are easy to gloss over. Indeed, it’s even tempting for teachers to assume something closer to a caricatured version of themselves because more nuanced approaches are harder to understand and enact.

Kirschner et al., 2022, p. 239

When hoping to use educational research to inform practice, a sensible place to start is to simply acknowledge the existence of the complexities described above. It is dishonest (or even ‘delusional’) to make clear, definitive claims about what is ‘true’ and ‘useful’ (Wiliam, 2015). Any suggestion that there might be a single, research-based best course of action in any given classroom or school should be treated with caution, if not suspicion. If a teacher or leader, having been told that a particular practice is true and will be useful, is then faced with that practice obviously not working in their particular case, they are left with few places to go.

Fortunately, many involved in translating research and theory into practice are alive to the fact that ‘there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule for “what always works”’ (Kirschner et al., 2022, p. 38, original emphasis). To return to the example above, the EEF are careful in how they position their guidance. Their toolkits ‘do not make definitive claims as to what will work to improve outcomes in a given school’, instead choosing to use the language of what ‘might’ work (EEF, 2024). Some practitioners looking to research for help tackling some of the problems that they face might prefer to be promised that something will work, rather than simply being offered something that might. But teachers and leaders do not need false hope that things are straightforward or easy when they are not.

The practitioner as the decision maker

Just as important as effective “rules of thumb” is the capacity to evaluate why such established practices sometimes do not work in new circumstances. That capacity requires an understanding of the rationale for their use – of the theory that underpins them – which gives teachers the capacity to determine what exactly needs to be adapted to meet the specific circumstances that they now face.

Burn et al., 2023, p. 17

In an environment where concepts of what is ‘true’ and/or ‘useful’ are contested and only ever provisional, teachers and school leaders cannot expect more from research than is possible for research to give. Instead, they need tools and support to help them to understand their context, make decisions, test ideas and implement changes in the midst of this complexity. Teachers and leaders can and should absolutely draw on the knowledge, information and ideas that research findings can offer (Weston and Clay, 2018). But they must not relinquish their professional judgement to uncritically follow what they mistakenly believe – or, worse, have been told – is what the research dictates to be the best course of action (Burn et al., 2015). Teachers and leaders must be positioned (or position themselves!) as the decision-makers in their context. No amount of research findings can remove the need for professionals to make decisions about what they believe is worth trying in their specific setting. What is ‘useful’ to a teacher or school leader will always ultimately be a local decision (Firth and Warren-Lee, 2023).

If we are asking teachers and leaders to weigh up different options and make decisions in this way, there are implications for how teachers and leaders are trained, educated and developed. Firstly, opportunities should be sought (and taken) to occasionally expose practitioners to how educational research conclusions have been reached and not just what was concluded. It is unrealistic for teachers and leaders to be expected to read every journal article behind every recommendation that they want to try to incorporate into their practice. However, considering all the above, it is reasonable that ‘research literacy, including expertise in the use and interpretation of evidence should be recognised as an important component of professional expertise’ (Perry and Morris, 2023, p. 211). Teachers and leaders should be able to make professional connections with education researchers; they should be given time to join book groups or journal clubs; they should be invited and encouraged to participate in their own research. We cannot expect teachers and leaders to effectively use research if they haven’t first had the opportunity to understand it.

Secondly, from the very beginning of their careers, we need practitioners to know that their role requires the ability to evaluate and then choose between different options based on their ‘usefulness’ (Burn et al., 2023). We also need practitioners to know that while it is highly unlikely that there is a single best option, research can help to narrow down choices to things that might be worth implementing (Knight, 2022). Teachers and school leaders also need to be empowered to evaluate for themselves whether something is working in their setting, and to decide when it is time to revisit their options or experiment with something new. As Müller and Cook concluded in the Chartered College of Teaching’s recently published working paper on teacher professionalism, teachers ‘should be encouraged to become critical research consumers who question and adapt research evidence before adopting it for their contexts’ (2024, p. 18).

Ultimately, we need everyone hoping to apply theoretical research findings into practice to appreciate the tension between the realistic need to determine ‘usefulness’ and the imperative to be honest about what research can and cannot tell us. If researchers and practitioners can agree that irrefutable, universal conceptions of what is ‘true’ and ‘useful’ are unachievable, we are more likely to help teachers to move towards a greater understanding of ‘truth’ and ‘usefulness’ in their context.