As a teacher in Further Education (FE), I read a cross section of teacher blogs and engage with the debate that is burgeoning on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and the new blogging platforms that are now widely available.

The increasing importance of teacher blogging is self-evident. Education secretaries, senior politicians and the sector watchdog (OFSTED) have all name checked teacher bloggers. There is an example in the passage below, from a speech made by the former education secretary Michael Gove in 2013:

“Which is why it is so encouraging that a growing number of teachers – indeed the most popular teachers on the web, like Andrew Old, whose blog has received more than 600,000 hits; Tom Bennett, with almost eight and a half thousand followers on Twitter, and Joe Kirby, with almost 2,000 – are arguing for a restoration of knowledge and direct instruction; in short, standing up for the importance of teaching.”

the fact that classroom teachers and educational practitioners generally are having an increasing say in educational matters is overwhelmingly positive

Anecdotally speaking, if you read the transcript of the speech much of it could have been taken verbatim from any number of teacher blogs I have read in the last two or three years. There are many shared sources, cited researchers and shared opinions. One thing, in particular, that unites both politician and an influential group of teacher bloggers is the view that education needs saving from a progressive elite, described by Michael Gove as “the blob“, which undoubtedly includes academic educationalists. I think the fact that classroom teachers and educational practitioners generally are having an increasing say in educational matters is overwhelmingly positive. Teacher bloggers are organising meet-ups through social media and have their own research groups. This is all great stuff, but I do have one concern, which is the missing voice of mainstream academic educationalists from the debate.

Not all academics are missing from the conversation. There are winners and losers. The winners are a diverse group; those engaged in quantitative research feature prominently in teacher blogs. Oft quoted is John Hattie who makes great play of the fact that he has thousands of research papers in a meta-meta-analysis framework.

Also mentioned in Michael Gove’s article, cited above, is Tweeter, blogger and media medic Ben Goldacre, the bad science guru, who contributed a paper to the Department for Education (DfE) about Random Control Trials (RCT’s). Apparently, RCTs are underutilised in an educational context. The truth of RCTs in education is open to debate but the fact that a medic was asked to contribute a paper must say something about the mind-set at the Department for Education.

As well as medics, psychologists such as DT Willingham, an effective user of social media, and also cited in the article is clearly an influence on both policy and the online debate. In fact just about anyone has more to say about education than mainstream academic educationalists. There seems to be little agreement amongst teacher bloggers, of what educational research should look like or what it should be doing.

It is unsurprising that academic educationalists do not engage with the “free for all” that is education blogging. Professional reputations can be damaged by bruising encounters with bloggers. Academic educationalists cannot engage in the kind of “in your face” polemics that practitioners or, as is often case, former practitioners, politicians and think tankers can. Our jobs do not depend on our professional reputation for developing education policy or pedagogic knowledge.  

In my, albeit anecdotal view, the absence of mainstream academic educationalists is leaving a problematic gap in the online debate. There is too much influence exerted on online educational discourse by politicians, and “talking heads” from other fields. It narrows the social media debate, leaving it lacking the breadth of expertise offered by academic educationalists. I think the message is clear; academic educationalists need to engage with teachers on social media or risk being side lined.