The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Why Research Matters with Kate Gasaway
Ever feel like you're teaching on an island? Kate Gasaway's conversation about the power of educational research might be exactly what you need to build connection and advocate for your students.
For busy educators wondering how to begin engaging with research without becoming overwhelmed, Kate offers practical advice: start with summaries and conclusions, then selectively explore specific sections based on your needs and interests. She emphasizes examining multiple research sources rather than relying on single studies, ensuring that your understanding is built on a robust foundation of evidence.
Ready to transform your teaching practice through research? Listen now to discover how educational studies can help you break down professional silos, strengthen your advocacy efforts, and connect with the broader teaching community in ways that benefit both you and your students.
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Curriculum Associates, an education technology company, and the makers of iReady, presents the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Join host Haley Browning to hear tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We believe all educators are extraordinary and we are here to support you. Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators podcast. Today we are joined by the wonderful Kate Gasaway. On today's episode, kate talks to us about the importance of research and why teachers should really care about research. She dives into a few different buckets things like understanding classroom trends and advocating for your students and how this research can all help back that up, as you're having conversations with colleagues and admin and just helping to build an overall better community within your school. So with that, we hope you enjoyed today's episode with Kate.
Speaker 1:Hi Kate, welcome to today's episode of the Extraordinary Educators Podcast. Hi Haley, thanks for having me. We're so happy to have you joining us today to talk all about your upcoming blog. I was reading through this blog and I cannot explain enough how important it is. In this blog you were talking about why teachers need national education research and how it's so important and impactful in their day-to-day, and so with that, kate, I wanted to kind of dive in and give you an opportunity to explain some of these pieces. Does that sound good? Yeah, that sounds great, all right. So with that, kate, we're going to go ahead and just dive into some questions. So why do you think teachers should care?
Speaker 2:so much about research. Well, it's going to come as no surprise. I work with our researchers. I really believe in the power of science and the power of research to tell us about who we are and tell us about the world in a way that is really powerful. But I know that education research, especially national education research, can feel far from what we do in our daily lives. But I believe it's really important. I'm super not unbiased, I'm such a believer for this, but there's kind of a few buckets of why I think teachers should care about national education research. First is that national research gives you context so it can take what's going on in your classroom and your community and let you know how it fits in with the broader picture.
Speaker 2:Teaching can be kind of an isolating profession. I was a classroom teacher for a while and I know that like when you're teaching you talk with other teachers but sometimes you're just in your classroom by yourself and you can feel very isolated. So that context. That's one reason.
Speaker 2:Second is that research, especially national research, can give you a stronger voice so it can help empower you in conversations. Sometimes you may not feel like your voice can be heard, but if you have a piece of national research that is reflecting what you see in your classroom or isn't reflecting what you see in your classroom, it can make your argument more powerful. So context giving arguments strength and then I think, similar to that context, like research, can help break down silos. You know you have something that you have in common with other teachers when you share a piece of research with them. You have an understanding that you can lean on and with that you have this. But we all know knowledge is power. So all of these things together help you advocate effectively, connect with your broader professional community, and that's something that is always important but right now feels absolutely essential.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really powerful, kate. I'd love to take a deeper dive into these three buckets. So you had mentioned number one, how it kind of fits into a broader picture being able to give context to your day to day, especially thinking about how teaching can be rather isolating. I know when I was a teacher I was kind of an island. I was the only fourth grade teacher at my school and I know that I would have loved to be able to kind of have like this backbone to have these conversations. So I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for how other teachers that may be listening can have these conversations or start facilitating these conversations to build out and strengthen, you know, those communities that they have.
Speaker 2:I think that the first thing is to recognize that for the most part, research publications are not meant to be read by the general public from start to finish, and so if we try and do that, you get lost in the details in a way. That's not helpful for lay audiences. So I'll tell you I work with these all the time I usually don't read the methods section too closely. There's going to be stuff in that that it's really really important for researchers, it's really really important for those very technical conversations. But I think the place to start to get that context, to get that connection out of a research piece, is you start with the summary at the top. There's usually like a brief summary and the conclusions at the end, because researchers will write about what conclusions they draw from the key findings at the end. And if you start with that, then you can go back and dig into other things as you see necessary, and that's where you can have those conversations. You can say, hey, this paper said these things.
Speaker 2:What do you think? Do you agree with this? Is this what you saw? Well, how did they do that? What do we? You know, let's look at the sample. Does this sample look like my school. Huh, it really does, or, oh, it doesn't. I wonder what that means for my community. What is it about your classroom? That's how I would start.
Speaker 1:And I think that's really doable with we know how busy teachers are. To kind of pick and choose these kind of starting points to then dive in as needed, like being able to kind of take that high level as a beginning step and then from there really taking what you need out of that research, I think is really powerful. That in and of itself will help those conversations be facilitated, whether that be with other teachers. And also thinking I'm curious, we're thinking about making this approachable for teachers but when we are looking at how we're building out that community of teachers and how this research can help support that, would you encourage teachers to take this to an admin level as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Like. One of the things I like about working about with educators as a whole is that there's a sense of curiosity, Like we're interested in what works, we're interested in getting the best outcomes for our students, and I think we all share that mission At least I hope we do Like and that's something that you can have those conversations with administrators and you might be surprised at the engagement you get with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really powerful. I feel like when you're bringing these conversations to obviously to other teachers but to admin, it can even make it into an even broader conversation, not just building admin. Maybe the building admin from there can then take it and run with it to, you know, district admin and I think it kind of opens up the door to think about the opportunity, as you were mentioning, of looking at it from your specific classroom lens and then you know, building admin may want to look at it from the building lens, things of that nature. So I think there's a lot of power to really build out this community, as you had mentioned. So thank you, kate, that's really great. Of course, I also am curious. You had mentioned the opportunity to have these pieces give strength to your arguments, so I would love to hear you expand on that. How can teachers use this to back up those conversations?
Speaker 2:So I'm in marketing. That's. My job is to help take research pieces that can seem esoteric and let people talk about them fluently and use them to lend credence to their arguments, and use them in a way that is an authentic representation of the results. Whenever you're making a persuasive argument, you always want evidence, and that's the way that you can see this is that research of any type is a proof point. I think one thing that's important not to get lost, though, is that, like, no one research paper is proof. It's all about the body of it. So, like one research paper shouldn't stand by itself. So if you are trying to make a persuasive argument using research as your proof point, you got to look at more than one thing. You got gotta look at a broad base of things, maybe a couple of different sources, so that you can be sure that your argument is well-founded. When I think about, like, what makes a persuasive argument? That's what I would look for. Like, do you have broad, varied support that tells me that what you're citing isn't just chance?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Kate, and kind of circling back to what we had talked about earlier, would you still recommend in those cases, when they're looking to other sources, that they go about the idea of, you know, looking at the summary and the conclusion still, and then diving in as needed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean because, looking at the summary, the conclusion will tell you what the researchers think the paper says and then, like, as you read more and get more familiar with the, the way these papers are written, you can say like, aha, you know, this is the premise that they've set up. This is the conclusion they're drawing. Do I think that what they have in the paper supports that conclusion?
Speaker 1:That's really powerful. Thank you, kate, and with that I think we're good to wrap up for today. We'll make sure to link Kate's blog in the show notes. You can take a little bit more of a deeper dive into learning about why teachers should be involved in this research and the power behind it. But thank you so much for your time today, kate. Thank you for having me Get inspired by following us on social and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum and on Instagram at MyEyeready, if you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or want to be a guest email. Extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you, join the conversation. Please leave us a review. Remember, be you be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Curriculum Associates believes that with the right supports, all children can reach grade level we provide. Thank you,