Welcome to an experiment in ways of supporting lifelong learning for all teachers and evidence-informed practice. We have chosen the word ‘MESH’ to represent the interconnectedness of the knowledge required for teaching.
OECD TALIS research shows that no country is managing to keep teachers up-to-date in subject and pedagogic knowledge. Digital tools allow new solutions to intractable problems.
MESH is a design for a teacher/researcher led, international, knowledge management system for teachers using digital tools to keep costs low:
MESHGuides are research summaries, updated periodically, written for teachers (and parents/carers), linked to the research giving rise to the advice.
MESHConnect describes the collaboration and international networking part of the MESH knowledge management and mobilisation strategy.
The report from the MESH Global Teacher Education Knowledge Mobilisation Summits, held in 2016/7, outlines a low cost ‘marginal gains’ strategy and Knowledge Management system for the education sector to resolve the problem of access to all to the latest knowledge. All educators and organisations can contribute, so collectively we can achieve UNESCO SDG 4 . The MESH system was presented at the UNESCO/ Teacher Task Force conference in Lome, Togo, September 2017 and as a result worldwide, voluntary partnerships are putting the ideas into practice. Please let us know if you have a better solution to the MESH system so we can collaborate.
By harnessing the power of technologies as well as existing research knowledge to:
Build a professional knowledge base of research summaries to improve practice in classrooms
Maximise accumulation of knowledge and research impact and minimise duplication
Publish research summaries as knowledge maps. MESHGuides provide examples.
Teachers need to keep up-to-date with the latest knowledge. To improve the quality of teaching by keeping teachers’ knowledge up-to-date the MESH system is testing:
Pooling quality-assured knowledge for teachers (subject content and pedagogy)
Providing open access, updatable, trusted, research summaries. Emerging examples.
Saving money by mobilising knowledge through technology giving efficiencies of scale and reach.
Supporting the UN’s SDG4 goals.
Governments, charities and policy makers are asked to: value/require/encourage/co-ordinate MESHGuide research summary production; join the MESH Advisory Board
Universities are asked to: require MESHGuide contributions from Masters/PhD theses and research staff.
Individual educators/professional organisations are asked to: to use/contribute to MESHGuides as researchers or reviewers and to train student teachers as research users and contributors
Potential funders are asked to: to fund research networks to pool knowledge in their areas of interest.
High quality teaching requires a high degree of pedagogic knowledge as well as up-to-date subject content knowledge.
MESHGuides are updatable research summaries developed by teachers and researchers working together to support evidence-informed teaching.
We are at the beginning of a long journey pooling, sharing and testing our collective research-based knowledge. We estimate tens of thousands of concepts need to be included in the MESHGuide list. This is a massive task. You are invited to join in, whatever your interests in education. See the Getting Involved tab.
Educators from 193 countries are reading about, using and contributing to MESH – the Mapping Educational Specialist knowHow system. MESH provides a sustainable system using resources already in the education system to generate, quality assure and update evidence-based summaries written for educators.
Evidence-informed practice in classrooms (EPiC) is much talked about. We define evidence-informed practice as requiring both research/evidence and teacher professional judgement about the context and learners ie explicit knowledge + tacit knowledge. All teachers can be EPiC practitioners if they are given the tools.
MESH is an international education sector owned and managed initiative, developed by volunteers, with MESHGuide research summaries quality assured as are academic journal articles. For updates register and follow the Tweets (@meshguides) on the MESH online community on the Knowledge Hub (www.khub.net). Email enquiries@meshguides.org to join.
Every day, teachers and lecturers exercise their professional judgement in deciding how to help learners learn. MESHGuides show how, when fully developed, knowledge maps can provide evidence-based advice to support educators’ professional judgements. MESH is a tool of the Education Futures Collaboration charity (UK Charity number 1157511). This video outlines how MESHGuides provide educators, researchers and policy makers with access to the science of learning, supporting them in their work as well as the achievement of UNESCO and OECD priorities for education. Sign up to the newsletter to keep in touch.
MESH invites educators worldwide to collaborate to build a quality assured ‘Edupedia’ form of ‘Wikipedia’ of professional knowledge for teaching.
MESH supports the use of scalable and low cost technologies to enable educators to engage in research collaborations and publications around topics they consider will make a difference to student’s learning. To ensure sustainability, MESH is a voluntary education sector led initiative funded by contributions of time and money from a wide range of members and supporters.
“In many countries, education is still far from being a knowledge industry in the sense that its own practices are not yet being transformed by knowledge about the efficacy of those practices…”(OECD, 2009, p.3).
The OECD identify a global challenge facing education today, as the need to create “knowledge rich, evidence based education systems”, making relevant research on transformative learning and teaching accessible. International studies (OECD:TALIS 2009, Barber and Mourshed 2009) indicate that improving the quality of our educators is more important than increased financial investment. The OECD challenges governments, academics and practitioners to adopt new ways of sharing and building knowledge. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Education 2030 plan require collaborative effort to achieve the challenging goals of quality education for all.
Existing models for system improvement assume that educators and teacher educators have easy access to a high-quality professional knowledge base. Professional pedagogic knowledge which provides the foundations of practice is treated as a ‘magic ingredient’ which does not require discussion, systematic management, renewal, coordination, resources or support. MESH addresses this gap.
Providing teachers and other educators with quick access to summaries of specialist knowledge, based on research, to support their professional judgement.
Providing a place where teacher-research networks and academic researchers are able to disseminate their research in forms accessible to practitioners, teacher educators and policy makers.
Providing a means for identifying research questions that teachers and other educators want answered and communicating this with researchers.
Signposting current research and gaps in the research base so as to help avoid duplication invite critical scrutiny of current research.
MESH is a translational research project initiated by the Education Futures Collaboration with the goal of creating a joined up education profession, linking pockets of excellence in teaching, research and evidence based practice and supporting professional judgement with evidence through giving access to transformative diagnosis and intervention strategies.
MESH Guides are quality assured and tested with teachers, providing advice linked to research and evidence.
MESH, when fully developed, will use digital technologies and an innovative knowledge mapping approach to provide personalised research based advice and just in time learning to support teachers in extending and deepening their professional knowledge.
MESH uses online graphical maps or flowcharts (MESHGuides) to present complex knowledge. Research and evidence links are provided with the summaries for those who want to gain in-depth knowledge. Such specialist knowledge and links might include video links to teachers’ explanations of complex concepts as well as to questions, modelling, simulations, assessments and interventions to improve understanding.
New ways of working: Professional knowledge is not static but there will never be enough additional funding to keep professional knowledge up to date unless we harness energies and resources already in the education system such as the research that is undertaken for masters thesis and PhD and EdD theses together with the work of teacher-researcher networks. MESH as a system is designed to engage educators in building and updating the evidence base for practice.