Product reviews for Teacher-Led Research

Teacher-Led Research by Richard Churches and Eleanor Dommett provides a wealth of valuable examples of how teacher-led research can support the development of classroom practice and contribute to school improvement and attainment through rigorous experimentation. The book describes a series of new and innovative approaches which were led by teaching schools - analogous, Churches and Dommett argue, to teaching hospitals. They see this as a way to develop teaching practice in the same way that clinical practice is tested in medicine.

The aim is to describe and support school-improvement focused research work by undertaking classroom-based micro-trials. The book shows how teachers working in other schools could apply similar approaches in collaboration with others. The book is a timely and valuable contribution, explaining how to design small-scale fair tests of ideas about changes to practice, which are driven by teachers' own questions about what is effective. It sets out the principles behind scientific testing, guides the development of a testable question, considers what data to collect and provides support in the analysis and communication of findings.
This book will be of interest to anyone who is involved in practitioner research in schools, or teachers and schools who wish to develop their  knowledge and skills in this area and extend their research-based repertoire of tested practical approaches. It contains a wealth of practical examples which are interesting, sometimes even challenging, but then this is exactly the point. Are you brave enough to put your beliefs and assumptions about what is effective to a rigorous test?