Quality use of research as a capacity

This chapter explores quality use of research as a professional capacity in terms of how educators’ mindsets, skillsets and relationships can support them to use research well. Drawing on educators’ survey and interview responses, it shows how:

educators’ views about using research well provide strong support for the importance of the three individual enablers of mindsets, skillsets and relationships;

quality research use mindsets are ones that value research and its potential to guide practice and approach research use in thoughtful, reflective and open-minded ways;

skillsets are important in enabling educators to access, read and appraise research, as well as to understand research fit when implementing research-informed changes;

relationships within and beyond the school support educators to engage in specific research use tasks and share knowledge that underpins the quality use of research;

there are strong interconnections between educators’ mindsets, skillsets and relationships, with each of these elements seen as supporting each other; and

conceptualising quality use as a capacity is about leveraging educators’ knowledge and experiences to better target improvement efforts around research use.