PRACTITIONER RESEARCH PROGRAMME THE KNOWLEDGE The PRP research community: Research degrees awarded/in progress

Full Professorship Awarded PhDs Current PhD research students

Awarded MPhil Current MPhil research students

Grand total

Total1121961250 developed from ‘big’ research ‘work’ in the way randomised control trials (RCTs) might do – and it is not large enough in scale to claim that a particular approach will work in more than one setting – some policymakers may struggle to make sense of how PRP research can impact educational improvement on a wider scale. It has also taken time for those involved to find the most systematic and robust ways of presenting the emerging contributions to practice and professional learning in order for it to be considered rigorous,

1 CASE STUDY Marcin Lewandowski FSET

‘By promoting practitioner research, organisations develop more engaged, reflective and resilient teachers’

Marcin Lewandowski, head of learning at social enterprise Action West London, is passionate about the value of action research. “It’s such a great way to build your continuing professional development because you’re immersed in it and it’s so relevant to what you’re doing,” he says. He had already completed an MA earlier in his career, as well as a number of smaller studies, so was no stranger to research.

Over the course of his shorter PRP and subsequently an MPhil and PhD, he has focused on how to promote learner autonomy. Two studies looked at using Google tools such as Hangouts and Docs for learner collaboration in adult education settings – a practice that many students will be familiar with since the pandemic, but which was innovative in 2014 at the time of the research.

“Because they are immersed in their practice, practitioners are more likely to identify problems and spot opportunities to improve it,” he adds. “No one could have predicted that three years after the second study [into online collaboration] was completed, we would all be working online and, when a lot of organisations were scrambling to organise their provisions, we had already been doing ‘hybrid’ delivery for five years. Ultimately, I think robust and useful to a wider audience of academic researchers and practitioners. that by promoting practitioner research, organisations develop more engaged and resilient teachers.”

In this context, the PRP provides us with a new model of educational change and improvement, which is now making important contributions to the research infrastructure across England and more recently on a global scale.

This article offers some case studies of sector practitioners’ direct experiences of the impact of the PRP upon practitioners.

In the next issue, Gregson provides further examples of the impact of the PRP across different sector organisations.

Lewandowski believes that the chance to pursue research has impacted not only his individual practice but that of Action West London more widely. After completing the PRP, he achieved his PhD in 2021 and has been working with the team at SUNCETT to support others going through the process.

He is inspired by the insight and feedback he received from his own supervisor when he was doing his PRP, adding: “Your supervisor can reassure you that you’re on the right track, and if not can let you know and guide you back.”