The aim of the RiTE-project is to promote and facilitate (student) teachers to create an evidence-informed teaching practice in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. In this project, (student) teachers are stimulated to use evidence from educational and scientific research to experiment and innovate their teaching and learning processes. With evidence-informed teaching practices we allude to the use of current relevant research to plan lessons. This project responds to two major challenges of our societies on a European dimension: 1. It addresses the current challenge of evidence-informed decision-making in an age where pieces of evidence are increasingly ignored by policy makers world-wide and the amount of information is increasingly complex leading to initiatives such as EU4FACTS; 2. It addresses the need that the European Commission has recently put down regarding the strengthening of initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) (EC, 2015). We perceive educational settings as decisive for educating later decision-makers for evidence-informed policies who need role models in their teachers. Consequently, we endeavour to apply the strategies of evidence-informed policy making (Breckon & Dodson, 2016) to ITE-settings. who have a shared interest in research in teacher education and teaching practice. During the RiTE-project, (student) teachers are stimulated to use scientific evidence from educational and science research to experiment and innovate their teaching and learning processes. In phase I all partners will use their specific teacher training context to conduct case studies in which materials are designed to integrate evidence-informed practices for cohorts of at least 15 student teachers per partner. The intended outcome is that the cohorts of students will develop more solid skills to integrate research in their current and future teaching practices (research literacy). The strategies and developed resources will be presented in five different case studies, which will serve as learning resources for the second phase. In phase II at least five teachers from each institute (who were students the year before) will be monitored and supported in their first year of in-service teaching in maintaining their evidence-informed teaching practices. One of the support structures will consist of the materials created in the first phase. Using a multi-method approach with log-files, focus groups and interviews, the five locations will analyse the collected data to come to useful recommendations for other ITE institutions and other organisations that would like to get more evidence into their teaching practices. The support structure developed in the RiTE project will consist of three components: 1. a multimedia website including five case studies (movies, articles, resources), one for each RiTE partner, that presents how they designed a teaching and learning trajectory in which they integrated evidence-informed practices. The digital open and accessible environment contains tools and equipment to organize actions aiming to support teachers in searching and translating scientific information to use in their teaching practice using instruments for preparation and evaluation, lesson study, or individual action research, to innovate their teaching practice. (O1) 2. a report with the empirical validated support structure and recommendations of participating teachers and teacher educators about how they managed to maintain their research-informed perspective. This report will be offered for publication and is about the insights into the way (student) teachers meaningfully search for, read, interpret, and translate scientific information and evidence from educational and science research when conducting small scale experiments, and into what factors in the school environment influence teachers in creating and developing a evidence-informed teaching practice. The information in the report forms the input for other publications and conference contributions to disseminate the results. (O2) 3. a European Support Network of educational researchers, teacher trainers and teachers in which literature, lesson materials, expertise, and experiences are shared regarding creating and embedding an evidence-informed practice. (O3) After the EU funding ends the universities will be able to continue to use the results, intellectual outputs, products and materials in the courses of their respective curriculum of their teacher training programmes. The network will be incorporated and further extended within the DUDOCnetwork (www.dudocnetwerk.nl), the EAPRIL's cloud communities, and embedded into the Scientix community. Through these platforms and communities, the results and intellectual outputs of this project are maintained and disseminated.
The aim of the RiTE-project was to promote and facilitate (student) teachers to implement evidence-informed teaching practices in STEM-education. In this project, (student) teachers were stimulated to use evidence from educational and scientific research to experiment and innovate their teaching and learning processes. Formulated as concrete questions, this project asked: 1. How can trainee STEM teachers be supported in integrating evidence from educational and scientific research in their teaching practice? 2. Can the strategies of evidence-use mechanisms for policymakers be applied to initial teacher training and CPD? 3. How can the findings of questions 1 and 2 be used to support teachers to put into action evidence-informed small-scale innovations in their first year of teaching practice? Addressing these questions allowed us to support teachers and teacher trainers to develop and innovate their educational practice based on evidence, and as such contribute to reducing the gap between theory and practice in ITE.
This project responded to two major challenges of our societies on a European dimension: 1. the current challenge of evidence-informed decision-making in an age where pieces of evidence are increasingly ignored by policymakers worldwide and the amount of information is increasingly complex leading to initiatives such as EU4FACTS; 2. the need regarding the strengthening of initial teacher education (ITE) and continuous professional development (CPD) (EC, 2015)*. We perceived educational settings as decisive for educating later decision-makers for evidence-informed policies who need role models in their teachers. As such, we endeavored to apply the strategies of evidence-informed policy-making (Breckon & Dodson, 2016)** to ITE-settings. This project addressed these challenges by building a support structure for (future) teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) by educating trainees in implementing evidence-informed practices to improve their teaching and learning processes. The project stimulated a European-wide collaboration between trainees and practitioners to exchange good practices in evidence-informed activities. *European Commission (2015). https://bit.ly/2C0lJ4L **Breckon & Dodson (2016): https://bit.ly/1Ts