Facilitators/barriers to knowledge creation and knowledge utilisation in schools and other educational settings as perceived by Singapore school practitioners

Introduction: MOE’s recent curriculum innovations and interventions require the adoption of evidence-based practice by school practitioners. It is therefore useful to explore how the findings from the established research tradition of knowledge transfer and knowledge utilisation can be applied to facilitate knowledge creation and knowledge utilisation in Singapore schools and classrooms.

Aims: The project aims to achieve a better theoretical understanding of the facilitators and barriers to the use of research in Singapore schools and classrooms. This is accomplished by examining the quality and supportiveness of school organisation and environment; appropriateness, accessibility and generalisability of research findings; knowledge, skills and disposition of practitioners; and the appropriateness and effectiveness of networking and communication channels between researchers and practitioners. These are measured by the use of in a self-reported survey. Any facilitators and barriers to research use as perceived by teachers, middle managers and school leaders is compared and contrasted to identify possible policy levers and interventions which can be introduced to facilitate research use to improve practice.

Method: A psychometric instrument based on Sandra Funk et al’s BARRIERS scale was developed to measure the perceived barriers and facilitators to knowledge utilisation and was piloted with a group of MOE HQ officials. Focus group discussions are carried out to further improve the draft instrument. The final instrument is then administered to teachers, head of departments, vice-principals and principals in 14 primary, 16 secondary and 6 junior colleges/IP schools that were randomly sampled, stratified by school types and school zones.

Findings: Our study suggests that the perceived barriers to knowledge use as reported by Singapore school practitioners were low. One a scale of 1 to 6, the average reported barrier to knowledge use is 2.77, i.e. closer to ‘Disagree’ than ‘Somewhat Disagree’ that the stated dimensions posed barriers to their efforts to use knowledge to improve school and classroom practice. Notwithstanding the overall low reported barriers among the practitioners, barrier in the Communication dimension was reported the highest among the respondents across grade levels, designations and years of experience. At 3.06, the average Communication score is about three-quarter of a standard deviation higher than the average Practitioner score of 2.41 (lowest among the sub-scale). The next highest average Innovation score of 2.89 also suggests that many practitioners perceived that the barrier in Innovation dimension was higher than Practitioner. One severe limitation of my study is it sole reliance on one single method. We attempted to complement our survey research study with a small scale unstructured Focus Group Discussion with some teachers and the teachers reported substantial challenges in applying knowledge to improve practice. A follow-up study that is designed to surface richer qualitative information about how teachers use knowledge in classrooms will further promote the understanding of this field.