The Benefits of Conducting Research Within your School

Jesús Velez Alonso explains what CANI culture is and how schools leaders can effectively implement it within their schools.

Thanks to a great mentor (who taught me “Geographical Regional Analysis” while I was studying my geography degree) I realised that education was my true vocation. I started my teaching journey in 2009 after a short period working for an NGO. Since then I’ve always been involved in teaching at different age levels, including secondary and vocational schools. My interest in research started in 2015, when I joined the University of Cádiz as a cover teacher in the Faculty of Education. I was teaching future primary education teachers and started my PhD studies with a research focus on cultural identity and how social studies’ subjects could shape that identity. In December 2019 my doctoral thesis was approved. A few months before, in September, I had the opportunity to join Sotogrande International School. The fact that it was part of the Inspired Education Group gave us new opportunities to grow and connect with similar schools all around the world. Since then I’ve greatly enjoyed this new journey, collaborating with colleagues, learning and doing my best to create engaging learning experiences. 

The slogan that better suits a teacher’s mind could be one coined by Tony Robbins in the late 80’s: CANI Culture. Which stands for “Constant and Never Ending Improvement”. It has nothing to do with overcomplicating our busy daily routines at school. It’s about not being tired, enthusiasm is key, taking some time to look at the bigger picture and it could also be a preventative factor for burnout! I’m sure all of you want to improve the way you do things and gain more efficiency, a great way to do this is through research, as it unveils what’s working well and what needs to be improved.

Regarding your research focus, you should ask yourself what part of your school you are interested in knowing better. Maybe you want to research teaching expertise, or the impact that some kind of new activity had on students' learning. You can also focus on the different parts of typical teachers' workdays: planning, delivering a lesson, checking students' engagement, preparing exams, marking and finally grading. Or maybe you would like to sharpen the idea of what is an active learning environment, and discover if your school is actually creating one. You could also explore what are the best classroom management skills in your department. Or how the interaction is between teachers and students. You could even analyze if you are giving your students enough agency, measuring their perceptions about this. Or if your teaching practice is facilitating their learning? To what extent?

We also know that continual professional development is a key, but it’s not everything; is it providing better results? What is the best pedagogy you should follow? What is working well in that subject? And then…is this new approach any better or should we stay within the previous one?

For all that, we should consider what our research paradigm could be. In education, quantitative methods usually don’t fit what we want to discover. So choosing the methodology that best suits your research focus is a must. Qualitative methods such as Grounded Theory (Glasser & Strauss) and Research-Action (Stenhouse) are finding their place in educational research journals as they’re helping in the discovery of really interesting things that are happening in our classrooms.

It’s important to accept that difficulties will arise. Maybe some members of your team could feel some kind of fear of being observed. But if your school is ruled by an open door policy, that fear won’t last too long . As members of a community they will get used to learning walks within the school, as there’s evidence that these improve the sense of belonging and create a culture of sharing in the community. Conducting interviews or sending surveys should not be a problem if your school has implemented some sort of CANI culture.

How is everything you and your team are doing really supporting your school values? Is everybody pursuing the same vision? Is your school’s vision generating hope, dynamism and enthusiasm in the whole community? These are some questions we can use to check how the team is working together and whether they are being led by a common goal. 

To sum up, a CANI culture could help your team stay motivated while at the same time improving their teaching journey, conducting research could help in keeping a safe school environment as it helps reflect on daily practice data. While conducting research ask relevant and focused questions that point directly to your school action plan or the target you want to observe. Foster connection between colleagues using the open doors policy. From this point on, stay critical, be consistent and act accordingly after analysing your research data and results.

It would be great to hear from you about your thoughts and experiences on this.