Teachers' Research Literacy as Research-Informed Professional Judgment

In this chapter I propose a concept of ‘research literacy’ as a central professional knowledge requirement of a teacher. Developing research literacy is positioned within a professional inquiry approach to high quality initial teacher education and provision of effective professional development for experienced teachers. The argument develops from a focus on the knowledge that teachers require to teach effectively and to contribute as professionals to collective leadership in developing education practice and policy. The complex interdisciplinary and multi-paradigmatic field of education is seen as lending itself to development of ‘research-informed’ rather than ‘evidence-based’ practice by teachers. Collaborative professional inquiry is proposed as a middle way for teacher professional development, beyond pragmatic top-down evaluation, that borrows tools such as ethical frameworks and systematic analysis of data from practitioner research. Such professional inquiry requires teachers to develop a level of research literacy, knowledge and skills they may use to critically evaluate different sources of research-based evidence, including randomised control trials, metareviews of research, qualitative research, narrative research reviews and most challenging to evaluate, professional guidance materials that claim to be ‘evidence-based’. Both research literature and professional guidance are entangled with the plethora of blogs, websites, social media exchanges, and published books based on social media notoriety rather than scholarship, meaning that teachers need to be selective and discerning readers. However, teachers are not positioned as merely consumers of research and professional guidance, because they also contribute to knowledge in the field, via collaborative research activity and via development of practical wisdom through professional inquiry.