Research

We are asked how research, teaching and learning inter-relate. What is research? It appears in business as 'research and development' (R&D) - that is discovering evidence about products and new products. In University it has a range of meanings, normally distinguished by status. If it attracts money, it has status, but not otherwise.
My view starts with young children.
The five year old who does experiments in floating and sinking, weight, volume and area is doing research. A class I know researched a local map. Each was given a task, one to mark the water metres and hydrants, another to record electricity cables, another to track drains. They put this together into an area map. This is research.
A class of 6 year olds I once met in Oxford were told that the teacher would tell them nothing, but they had to find it out for themselves and check it. They organised their classroom, managed their workload, and were responsible for their own learning. They were involved in a range of research, and we hope that they met similar open minds later in their schooling. Research is the systematic discovery of processes and the construction of knowledge, in ways which makes clear that knowledge is not final and definitive, but has to be revisited constantly. If primary school pupils were enabled to become researchers, rather than recipients of information (some correct and much not) their learning skills would be greatly enhanced.
Later in school they are delivered packages to get to know, remembering without thinking. The purpose of this is exams, and the function of exams is to make the school accountable. This has the side effect of ranking children in order of achievement, that is how well they did in the exams. This follows them for life.
At each stage, the package is learned, and leads to the next stage where that package is unlearnt as too simplistic. The learning of the previous years is thus null, void and wasted. At each stage they start again. The reason for this is "the syllabus", increasingly controlled by GCSE and A level.
If young people instead were on the cutting edge of finding out for themselves, they are more likely to be motivated and life-long learners. Therefore, curricula, syllabuses and exams simply serve to destroy learning in a vain attempt to measure and rank.
If the explorations described with 5 and 6 year olds were continued and deepened, children will grow up as researchers aiming to improve their world. As it is they end up as failures determined only to destroy themselves.
So why can't we see the problem?
© Stephen Bigger.