On Thursday 6th I attended the Learning and Skills Research Network (LSRN) conference “Engaging with research: developing a new future” at Marble Arch, London. It was supported by NIACE and sponsored by City and Guilds, Edexcel, The Higher Education Academy and Institute for Learning.
The line up of the morning keynote presenters was excellent.
Ursula Howard, Director NRDC (National Research Development Centre) spoke about the need to join research and practice. She was inspiring in her analysis of the greater benefits to be gained from merging the efforts of communities of practice and communities of research. Even more inspiring when she alluded to the overall benefits of research to the wider social education movement, by quoting Karl Marx: “The point is not just to understand the world but to change it.”
Our second speaker Professor Mary Hamilton from University of Lancaster, spoke about the role of practitioner research and identified various models for the design of practitioner-led research.
Our third keynote, Professor Ann-Marie Bathmaker, from University of West of England, had a truly engaging title to her presentation: “Beyond researching by doing: an invitation to ‘do’ less and read more.” She outlined the need to use what already existed within the research body, giving numerous examples of research collections and sources of information, including libraries and specialist collections. Her point was a simple one but one that is often overlooked.
After a fine lunch the afternoon gave an opportunity to attend workshops where various papers were presented.
At our workshop table I met with Prof. David Collinson and Maureen Morrison both from the CEL the Centre for Excellence in Leadership who had just recently published their 4 Volume series of papers on the 2006-7 Practitioner Research Projects entitled Researching Leadership in the Learning and Skills Sector: By the Sector, On the Sector. For the Sector. It was pleasing to see the paper written by Norman Borrett our late e-learning manager, who died earlier this year, was published and held a prominent position within volume 3 “Leading Quality Improvement”.
The final plenary session had some interesting questions and I was pleased to have the opportunity to ask my own which was “What are the benefits of a research culture to a further education college?” The panel sought to widen this to include all learning institutions, and of course as with all plenary sessions, answered in a slightly stilted way.
They gave the following as benefits:
- Research enhances teaching and learning
- Staff become reflective
- Research can inform and illuminate policy
- Research leads to a stronger public voice for the (FE) sector
- Moves (advances) practice by referring to research that has been undertaken
- Addresses succession crisis
- Research provides essential reflective thinking
Finally, the point was made that in FE there is a trade-off between research and teaching that may not be so obvious in HE.
The LSRN website can be found here
