Evidence for the Frontline: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary
Author: Lord, Pippa
Date: 2017-03-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Randomized Controlled Trials,Evidence,Facilitators (Individuals),Foreign Countries,Educational Improvement,Elementary School Teachers,Secondary School Teachers,Teacher Surveys,Special Schools,Teacher Attitudes,Teacher Behavior,Pilot Projects,Mixed Methods Research,Program Development,Outcomes of Education,Case Studies,Recruitment,Evidence Based Practice,Intervention

Evidence for the Frontline (E4F) is an online brokerage service designed to provide teachers and school leaders with timely access to relevant evidence on supporting young people's learning. It was developed by Sandringham School and the Institute for Effective Education (IEE) at The University of York, with support from the Coalition for Evidence Based Education (CEBE). Teachers and school leaders develop their own questions about improving teaching and learning and post them on the online platform. An online broker then matches the question to an academic researcher for a response; or signposts the teachers to relevant published evidence and answers already provided by the service. In some cases the broker supports the user to frame their question most effectively before passing it on. Examples of the research questions included: 'Are there any studies that set out to explicitly explore the influence that inter-school collaboration has on student outcomes?'; and 'Is there any evidence to suggest that students perform better if their Science teacher is teaching within their Science specialism up to Key Stage 4?' After a development phase, involving representatives from 12 schools, the service was delivered as a pilot in 32 schools (14 primary, 16 secondary and 2 special schools) between September 2015 and July 2016. The aim of the evaluation was to establish: whether the intervention is feasible to deliver; whether it has promise in terms of changing teacher attitudes and behaviour; and whether the service is suitable for evaluation in a randomised controlled trial. Key conclusions include: (1) Demand was at the upper end of expectations: 192 users from the 32 schools (around 9% of teachers) posted a question over the year of the pilot. Sixty percent of teachers who responded to the survey indicated that they used the service to ask a question or to read the responses; (2) The majority of users who responded to the survey had a positive experience of using the E4F service. They were satisfied with the quality of the answers provided and found the E4F website easy to use. The most common topics that users had evidence-based queries on included: pupil engagement and behaviour, developing independent thinking, differentiation, literacy, and feedback and monitoring pupil progress; (3) Users considered that there were benefits to using the E4F service, particularly in terms of providing opportunities for research discussion; increasing their interest and enthusiasm for research evidence; improving their schools' use of research evidence; and (although to a slightly lesser extent) helping to improve their practice in the classroom and pupils' learning; (4) The pilot identified a number of potential improvements needed to the service, including faster responses for teachers, better promotion of the brokerage role, and facilitation of greater direct dialogue between the teachers and researchers; and (5) Although there are signs that E4F is starting to make a difference to research engagement, it is not be suitable for a randomised controlled trial (RCT) measuring impact on pupil outcomes. The service is responsive to the questions teachers ask, which this pilot found to cover a wide range of subject areas, making pupil outcomes a challenge to measure using administrative data. Senior leaders and teachers were most positive in reporting that using E4F helped to improve their schools' approach to using research evidence and that it gave them opportunities to discuss research evidence with others. In addition, although to a slightly lesser extent, they felt it helped to improve their teaching.