Twenty-first-century educational practice: research, evidence and knowledge management - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 183

knowledge is a particular problem for subject specialist issues and is further com-
pounded by the fact that research published in journals is not generally designed
around questions teachers want answered; yet this is rarely if ever acknowledged
in the discourse about school and system improvement. This chapter proposes new
ways of working using technology to meet these challenges.
Introduction and context
The findings from OECD's Teaching and Learning International Survey (OECD
2009a) set out the global challenges facing education sectors worldwide. This OECD
research
. . . challenges national systems to consider the processes in place for build-
ing and accessing the knowledge base for educational practice and policy
making and to consider the quality of key levers for change in the system,
i.e. the quality and extent of the knowledge base and the quality and train-
ing of teacher educators.
(Leask 2011: 2)
This chapter examines ways in which the education sector might become a
'knowledge industry', and how it might support knowledge transfer, collaborative
knowledge building and knowledge sharing within education sectors in individual
countries as well as worldwide.
The McKinsey report's (2007: 2) key finding that the quality of teaching is
the single most important factor in improving learner outcomes might seem to
be stating the obvious, yet in the research around improving quality in educa-
tion, the quality of the professional knowledge base - for example, how teach-
ers know how to teach and whether they are basing their practice on up-to-date
knowledge, information and resources, or indeed research and evidence - is largely
ignored. Against the evidence, governments in a number of countries are encour-
aging graduates to 'Teach First', placing them on accelerated training schemes and
often deploying them in schools in deprived areas where logic might suggest
that this is where more experienced teachers with proven track records should be
placed.
We argue that improvements in quality of teaching will come if practice is under-
pinned by an evidence base for practice which is easily accessible to teachers any-
where at any time. There is an opportunity for those concerned with improving the
quality of education to provide a national infrastructure of e-tools and e-resources
which will enable educators, academics, researchers and teachers:
· to keep up to date through accessing the evidence-based knowledge they
need to improve practice, at the time they need it and in the form they
need it