MESH Guides

"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. UNESCO calls on all of us to prioritise education.

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.

MESH aims to:

• provide teachers and other educators with quick access to summaries of specialist knowledge, based on research, to support their professional judgement.
• provide 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
• provide a means for identifying research questions that teachers and other educators want answered and communicating this with researchers
• signpost 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 flowcharts/mind maps or pathways (MESH Guides) 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.

References and Further Reading

Background information and references are being regularly added here to give information about the foundations on which MESHGuides have been built.

Barber, M., and Mourshed, M., 2007. How the world's best-performing school systems came out on top’ McKinsey and Co. [online]. Source. Available from: http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/Social_Sector/our_practices/Education/Knowledge_Highlights/Best_performing_school.aspx [Accessed 18 June 2012].

OECD (2009) Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First results from Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) www.oecd.org/edu/school/43023606.pdf Accessed 30th August 2013