The National Teacher Research Panel was set up about 15 years ago by CUREE supported by a group of national education agencies most of which no longer exist. It had three main goals:
- To ensure that all research in education takes account of the teacher perspective
- To ensure a higher profile for research and evidence informed practice in government, academic and practitioner communities
- To increase the number of teachers engaged in and with the full spectrum of research activity.
Over the several years of its existence, the Panel, supported by its expert advisers in CUREE, has helped and encouraged dozens of teachers and school leaders to do high quality but practical research. The Panel also helped them report their findings succinctly, in plain English and focused on relevance to other practitioners. This is one such example of that work.
For this feature, the TLA research team selected research undertaken by the 'Researching effective pedagogy in the early years' (REPEY) project. We hope that this summary will offer all teachers the opportunity to find out about effective practice for laying the foundation for learning upon which all teachers and learners build.The early years of children's learning has traditionally been an under-researched area. The availability of this rigorous and far-reaching stream of evidence is an important step forward. This study stresses the importance of 'conceptual knowledge', which is concerned with principles and ideas rather than the more factually based 'procedural knowledge'. The researchers suggest that whilst the latter can be imparted by a number of teaching strategies, including direct teaching, the development of 'conceptual knowledge' requires a constructive process.Such a process, they infer, offers the child the opportunity to reflect on and to take responsibility for his/her own thinking. It requires the kind of sustained shared thinking that can be brought about by open questioning.The research design for the project set out to capture the many different aspects of children's learning during these formative years. It also set out to reflect the range of teaching and learning environments they encounter.Professors Iram Siraj-Blatchford and Kathy Silva led the research (Department for Education and Skills, Research Report RR356).You may also like to read our summaries of the researchers' subsequent reports about the impact of quality preschool experiences at Key Stages 1 and 2.
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