Dr Alison Clark-Wilson joins Russell Prue on NetSupport Radio to discuss her roles, education passions and talk at Bett 2020.
As a former school maths teacher, teacher trainer and researcher, Alison is currently working at University College London, using existing research to support edtech entrepreneurs in understanding whether what they are developing is going to have the desired impact – as well as teaching them how to generate their own research.
Alison explains, “So many people are having to make decisions on which edtech to bring into their professional practice or learning – and how do you know which to choose? At the heart of this question is the research and evidence which we need to get better at both generating and understanding, so we can make some sensible decisions.”
During her talk about ‘The Billion Dollar Edtech Question: Can We Prove it Works?’ at Bett on the Professional Development stage on Thursday 23rd January at 11am, Alison will cover what people think research evidence is all about, the formats and contents different people need to make better decisions – plus, some practical tools and insights.
Russell Prue: So pleased to be chatting to the fabulous Dr Alison Clark-Wilson. Hello and welcome to the show! How are you?
Dr Alison Clark-Wilson: I’m very well, thank you, Russell.
RP: Thank you so much for joining us on our radio channel. Just tell the listeners a little bit about you and what you’re doing this year at Bett, please.
AC-W: Most certainly. So I’m a former school maths teacher so. I think I first went to Bett in the 1990s, showing some amazing innovation that was around back then. But since then I’ve worked as a teacher trainer, as a researcher, and right now I work on a fantastic project at UCL where we support edtech entrepreneurs (that’s those people with all the bright ideas about all the educational challenges they’re going to help solve) to really understand whether what they’re developing is going to achieve the impacts for which they are designing.
RP: So is that very much a research-based informed view?
AC-W: Very much so. What we find is we work with fantastically enthusiastic people, you know, you don't go into an education and to try and make money, to be honest, you go in there because you’ve got some passion or project that you really think is going to make a difference for teaches the learners. And what we do is try to help them to find the existing research that might be useful to them, but most importantly, to learn how they can start to generate their own research findings around their products as they go, so they don't wait until the end when it's all built and they’ve spent a whole lot of money to find out that it might not quite fit the needs that they've actually designed it for.
RP: This sounds like the brilliant old ‘knowledge lab’ stuff. I didn’t know it was still going these days but that was their original aim, I think, as well.
This is fantastic. Just tell me a little bit more about your audience at Bett. So are you expecting to draw in entrepreneurs (or budding entrepreneurs) or teaching colleagues who have a cracking idea and want to put that into practice?
AC-W: Well, I think it's both of those and more, Russell. I mean, the most important thing is, so many people want the evidence of whether different education technologies are worth investing time and money in. Whether it’s designers about to embark on their projects or whether it’s teachers with really good entrepreneurial ideas, they want to learn how to realise those – but really, I think my audience is the people who actually take up this tech. So whether it's teachers, parents, students, learners, lecturers, you name it - so many people now are having to make decisions around which edtech they're going to bring into their professional practice or into their learning. And how do you know? And at heart of this is that evidence, it’s the gold in our golden triangle, that really we all need to get better at both generating and understanding so we can make some sensible decisions.
RP: Brilliant. Can I tease just one or two pieces of advice from you, then. So let's imagine we're at Bett… what can we expect to hear from you in your speeches?
AC-W: I will most definitely be drilling down what people think research evidence is all about. Most people think of people like myself as researchers, away in a lab somewhere, a long way away from practice or where the edtech is being created. In reality, we’re really in the heart of this. It’s about: what is that research evidence and who needs what? Because no teacher is going to read a 30-page academic paper. Similarly, if you go onto a company’s website and they’ve got two or three anecdotes from a school, you kind of think, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’. Different people want different evidence and different people will make sense of different evidence, but what we just need to do is get better at communicating it to each other.
So my advice is that whenever anyone is making a claim about a piece of edtech, just ask them about how they know. You start there. That’s the beginning of unravelling that mystery.
RP: Does the research take in the kind of classroom observations from practitioners, or are we looking at numbers? I'm just trying to drill down a little bit more into this. Is this just a numbers game or is there still room for the passion and the motivation and the stuff that's ineffable, the stuff that's hard for folks like Ofsted to tick in a box?
AC-W: We are in a difficult place at the moment in educational research because there's no doubt that people who like numbers, like to know what effect sizes are, and they like huge studies, and randomised-controlled trials – which might tell you at the end how it works. But it rarely tells you how it works or when it works or who it works well with best and how to get started. So even if you have that level of evidence, it's still never enough to learn how we replicate that in our own classrooms in educational settings.
So, for me, evidence is whatever is useful for you to be able to answer those questions for yourself. So, for example, if you're a school teacher and you've seen an educational technology product in another school, you know – going to visit them, going to see it at work in their classroom… the evidence of your eyes and ears is just as valuable as the evidence that somebody might have written somewhere. It takes a whole range of forms, but ultimately, I don’t believe any are better or worse than another. It’s about what is going to help you individually to learn a little bit more, to be more informed about any decisions you might be making.
RP: I'm so refreshed and inspired to hear this, Alison. I've always said it's always a matter of chemistry. Kids are different, the school is different, the setting is different, the parents are different, the socioeconomic groups are different - and what works very well over there may not necessarily work very well over here.
It is so good to have somebody doing this kind of stuff! If folks want to access this ahead of your talk or find out a little bit more, or perhaps they’re a small start-up looking to understand more about the market, where can they get hold of you and find out about this brilliant service you provide?
AC-W: The first place to go to is our website: www.educate.london. That’s where the front door is to our project. If you’re an entrepreneur developing edtech or a teacher with a really good idea wanting to connect with an entrepreneur to help build it, then that’s the place for you to go.
But equally, we have a very exciting initiative we're beginning, called ‘Educate for Schools’. This is something that I’ll be saying more about in my talk at Bett. This is the missing part which is: how do we help the teachers, schools, parents to know how to make some of those decisions around edtech? How do we help them to stay abreast of the way the technology is going? For example, lots of people are talking about artificial intelligence and how artificially intelligent systems are going to revolutionise what goes on in schools, classrooms and universities around the world. But what do teachers understand that to be, and how are they going to stay critical of some of those approaches if they don’t know what it’s all about? So we need a place where professionals can go and share the innovative practices that they're developing and learn about these things that are around the corner, for everyone to gain a better insight of what’s going on in classrooms around the world.
RP: I love it. You are the fact checker of the edtech world in a world of fake news. We so need someone like you. I wish you the very best of success at Bett and I look forward to seeing you – and do drop into our studio. I must catch up with you again and find out how your sessions went. Alison, thank you so much for joining us.