Engaging student teachers with evidence: trainers’ perspectives of barriers and opportunities

In society, rights and well-being are threatened by misinformation. The next generation of teachers will be responsible for progressing evidence-based thinking in schools. In this context, it is useful to find out more about student teachers’ engagement with evidence during their training. This interview study aimed to investigate barriers to student teachers’ evidence engagement, and ways to overcome these barriers, from the perspective of the teacher trainers who work with them. Our findings suggested that trainees are more motivated to engage with research if they see it as a norm and expectation of the job, if engagement is structured in ways that meet their needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2017), and if it is prompted and encouraged by simple nudges. We discuss how promoting research engagement can contribute to education’s current and future challenges, and suggest evidence-based pedagogy as a valuable route forward.