The quality of knowledge and beliefs that teachers use when solving teaching and learning problems

In this chapter, we present an overview of our research with teachers in Australia, the United Kingdom, Rwanda, and Malta to illustrate the types of knowledge and beliefs that teachers use to solve educational problems. We propose that the education research-to-practice gap identified by Hattie (2012) persists. Some of our study participants seem unaware of contemporary educational theories and the best educational practices those theories generate. Like Glogger-Frey, Ampatziadis, Ohst, and Renkl's (2018) teacher education students, our research participants also express fragmented and misconstrued knowledge about effective strategies for problem solving during learning. Research about effective educational initiatives needs to find better ways of translating, disseminating, embedding, and sustaining initiatives to develop strategic knowledge for teaching and learning in authentic contexts – that is, in teachers’ minds and in their practices in classrooms. This problem of encouraging the uptake of research findings into practice points beyond effectiveness studies to what Spoth et al. (2013) referred to as “Type 2 translation research”. In Type 2 research, researchers and practitioners work together to identify and maximise the systemic processes and structures that enable upscaling, integration, and sustained implementation of effective educational initiatives.