Last night my graduate students and I discussed the article “10 Things every literacy educator should know about research” by Duke and Martin (2011) published in the Reading Teacher. Duke and Martin discuss what research can do, what research is, and how to tell the difference between the terms research-based and research-tested. Additionally, Duke and Martin emphasize how essential research is to the teaching profession and how as educators we must be critical consumers of how research informs our practices. My graduate students, who are all practicing teachers pursuing their masters degree in reading education or developmental education, articulated how easy it is to dismiss or simply ignore “research” as a classroom teacher. While they all embrace the importance of research- especially since they are in graduate school attempting to advance their knowledge and expertise in literacy education- they feared that most teachers and administrators have little interest or need for research. Instead most teachers typically read what Duke and Martin refer to “gray matter research.” These are instructional ideas or practices found on pinterest postings or on websites like teaching ideas http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ that should be research-based.

The questions we pondered last night included: “How do we help other teachers and administrators see the value of research? How do we get them to care and become interested in new practices and approaches that benefit students and have been explored by credible research?” These are indeed important questions and while we didn’t come up with the correct answer- we all agreed that we needed to invite other teachers to learn with us through both published research and through our students. We cannot force teachers to act differently nor can we simply close our doors. We need to model how we question our teaching and our students’ learning. Share articles and invite other teachers to help us understand this thing we call literacy teaching and learning. How are you inviting other teachers to think about literacy learning? What research have you read that make you wonder and better understand your current practices?

References
Duke, N.K, & Martin, N.M. (2011). 10 Things every literacy educator should know about research. The Reading Teacher, 65(1), 9-22.