How to Get Involved

MESH is being built progressively through the collective effort of networks of educators from different countries and based in professional associations, schools, colleges, university subject specialist and teacher training organisations and other organisations. Volunteers work in specialist groups.

Research units/Schools and individual researchers/teachers – as contributors

Think about how you, your department team, your school, teaching and learning and leadership teams can contribute to MESHGuide research summaries. Can you engage with collaborative research between schools to make a difference on learning, progress, attainment and attitudes. Could you get involved in scaling up promising small scale research (so our evidence base is steadily strengthened) and/or through reading groups producing summaries of research published as MESHGuides. See the Authors section.

Submissions are made as word documents. The structure and content are then agreed between editors and the authors. (Interested in creating a MESHGuide?)

The MESH Steering Group (SG)

SG Members meet weekly and take on responsibility for core functions such as engagement of potential authors, lecturers, teachers and beginning teachers, newsletters, web development, training, quality assurance, finance, fund raising and so on. Teams are supported in applying for funding for individual projects to broaden participation and to accelerate development. To become involved email your CV stating your area of interest to Enquiries.

Opportunities for Organisations

Organisations can be involved as Voting Members or Associate Members to the charity, the Education Futures Collaboration. Members vote on developments. Members support, contribute to and promote MESH. Advice is provided to charities and researchers from member organisations about gaps in research in the areas of interest to them. Researchers from member organisations can be helped with the dissemination of their research to research users, with gathering data on the impact of their research or to link with teacher-researcher groups. For member organisations training teachers advice about how to maximise the benefits for student teachers and those undertaking Masters, PhD and EdD dissertations is available. Please email Enquiries with your request.

Opportunities for Authors to submit a research summary as a MESHGuide

We invite proposals from any country, from researchers in schools, universities, and other organisations so that we my learn from each other. We encourage proposals from teacher-researcher groups and networks, and from those who have completed PhD/EdD/Masters theses, other major research projects or systematic reviews. MESHGuides are summaries of existing research. Submission is simple – first submit a proposal. Then if your submission is approved, submit a word document. This should contain a short summary of the research findings and how these are relevant to practice (imagine you are explaining the relevance of the findings to the practice of a colleague who is a teacher or lecturer), linked to the evidence. You will be allocated an editor will help you with your submission. Where a MESHGuide already exists in your area then your research may help the accumulation of knowledge in the area and so may be linked with existing advice with differences and similarities highlighted.

Submit questions for research/suggest areas to be covered

Educators are invited to submit questions and ideas for research which have arisen from practice. Partner university departments and professional associations can pass these ideas onto researchers and those undertaking PhD/EdD and Masters level research which is where much subject pedagogic research is published. We are working to make this new knowledge more easily available through the Guides.

Join a Subject Specialist Editorial Board

Proposals for Editorial Boards are invited from professional associations and research groups/professional networks. Membership should include teachers and researchers so that the MESHGuides the Board approve are relevant to cteaching at specified levels. For places on MESH Editorial Boards (meeting two or three times a year) and the Steering Group (SG) mail Enquiries.

Form a Review and Development and Research Group (RADAR)

A RADAR Group is a network of educators who undertake one or more of a range of activities using the tools above to strengthen the research base. The Spelling MESHGuide was produced by a RADAR group – teachers working with professors of education. For example educators who are interested in a particular area of knowledge can, by working together strengthen the evidence underpinning each MESH Guide over time by synthesising research (Tool 3) or by taking promising ideas based on small scale studies and scaling up the work by testing the ideas in other locations (Tool 1).

RADAR Groups may wish to review the evidence in an area and produce a MESHGuide summarising this (Tool 3) and then go on to undertake collaborative research where their review indicates that further evidence is needed (Tool 2). The outputs of these groups are then MESHGuides underpinned by reviews and later by primary research. This approach builds on and extends innovative work happening across the education sector.

Those interested will need to form a group and decide how to operate. Some may wish to apply for funding support from charities or other sponsors but there will never be enough funding to support the research needed in pedagogy so we advise colleagues to do what they can within the slivers of time they collectively have available. By collaborating, academics will be able to undertake research which has more impact, reach and significance than they could achieve on their own and yet only takes them the same amount of time they might have put into a small scale project.

To see what can be achieved through voluntary review groups formed from professionals with a commitment to an area visit the Campbell Collaboration and the Cochrane Collaboration which support systematic reviews of the evidence base in education, social care, crime and justice as well as medicine. The Campbell Collaboration invites educators to join review groups and has a Knowledge Translation group working on improving the accessibility of research to users. Register on the Welcome page here to receive the newsletter to keep up to date with review groups. Groups are invited to create an education community on the Knowledge Hub online community platform to support virtual working across countries and regions.