Fostering an Evidence Enriched Culture AISNSW Symposium 2023

High impact teaching is underpinned and strengthened by teachers who are skilled in using evidence to inform and enrich their practice. By engaging in and with research, teachers strive to build on the practices they know work and de-implement or redesign those that don’t. While any effective educator will instinctively and consistently engage in the process of reflection, research and adjustment to improve their practice, action research gives this process a clear method and strategy.  

At the end of Term 3, I was invited to be part of a panel discussion at the Association of Independent Schools NSW Education Research Symposium 2023 to share experiences from our 2023 Action Research Professional Learning Project. This Symposium was designed to bring educators together to critically reflect and build on practices used by teachers to engage in and with research in their quest for continuous and sustained improvement in student learning outcomes.

Despite the varying experiences and backgrounds of panellists, we had all seen firsthand the benefits of practitioner-based research and its role in improving teaching and learning practices and outcomes. While external research plays an important role in informing best practice, every school has its own distinct context with unique challenges and aspirations to match. So as teachers seek out the latest educational research to develop strategies to improve student learning outcomes, as practitioner-based researchers, they will methodically (and often collaboratively) engage in a cycle of reflecting on the research, adapting the new strategies to suit their context and gathering evidence to measure the impact on students’ learning.

Through our 2023 Action Research Learning Project, we have seen the professional and student learning outcomes of this process and during the symposium, I was delighted and proud to share some of these outcomes. While there are too many to mention here, some of the highlights can be seen below in the images of our final project showcase for the year.

Kate Corcoran
Action Research Coordinator