3 Tips for Educational Research of Best Practices
Educators must strive to discover and utilize both “tried and true best practices” and experiment with “new, innovative” approaches to teaching and learning. Tapping in to educational research and expanding your PLN (Professional Learning Network) is a great way to accomplish this.
It is vitally important for educational practitioners to base their teaching habits and tools in strategies supported by research. Teachers often use research based practices without even knowing it. Conducting a little research can confirm that your pedagogy is solid. On the other hand, teachers frequently utilize tactics that are not effective, but they continue anyway because they are not familiar with the research. It takes a little time, but not much to conduct a little, specific research on a particular pedagogical area.
Here are 3 quick, simple tips I have learned when conducting research for best practices…
1) When you google it, (ie – best practices for grammar instruction), look for responses that come from universities.
2) Look for reports and studies with recent dates (ie – 2011 is better than 1976 – maybe).
3) When you find a report or article that references another, more in-depth study, search for that study. Dig deep. Beyond the surface. That’s where the best stuff can be found.
Here is an article with tips related to conducting your own educational research project.
I agree with you. Your blog post about best practices challenged my thinking. On the one hand, I think it’s ok to refer to tried and true approaches as “best practices” if they work and have proven to be effective. On the other hand, I completely agree about always looking for “next practices” and innovative ways of approaching. To me, balance is important. Both “best practices” and “next practices” have a place. Tipping the scale too heavily in either direction would be a loss.
What do you think about the best practices with “bright spots”? I just believe that “best practices” can lead to the same old same old behavior and nothing changes. The term is also thrown around way too much. Let’s use research to guide us and then look at ways to modify or adapt. Then, let’s try something really crazy and see how it works. See you next week. Your blog posts are inspiring me to get writing again.