“We should be supporting students to be trained in research”

When I was a teacher, back in another life, I wasn’t very good at it when I first started. I was teaching in a low economic area, with many students for whom English was a foreign language. 

There were low literacy and numeracy levels, and they weren’t really into learning about covalent and ionic bonds! I struggled because I was given poor advice, and I struggled a lot because I didn’t know how to engage my students. 

Then a new assistant head joined the school, who took me under his wing and one day said: “You and I are scientists because we look at something and say ‘That’s weird! Why is it doing that?” Get that curiosity into your students”.

This is something in pedagogical terms called experiential learning, and I became an experiential learning advocate. We all know experiential learning as “learning by doing”. You get the student to do something related to the learning and they say: “I can do this”. Suddenly something which previously might have been technical jargon, or a confusing diagram, makes more sense. 

If you try to teach someone about moments, they might look at it and be scared off by the maths behind it. However, if you give the same student a seesaw and some masses, ask them to balance the heavy mass against the lighter mass and they will learn by doing until the masses are balanced perfectly. Then you can introduce the principles of why this works, why is the heavier mass closer to the middle, to the fulcrum.

As a profession we train our students through experiential learning. Students go into placement to learn by doing X-rays. The same should happen with research. Why are we scared of it? 

We get annoyed when the media talks about doctors and nurses as if they are the whole of healthcare and we ask: "Why are not we mentioned?" In my opinion it’s because we aren’t shouting enough about what we are doing as a profession - and part of that is being involved in research to change and improve our service. Allowing students to develop the skills to do research at all levels would enable us to be involved in the shaping of healthcare.

Our code of conduct talks about using evidence-based practice, about using audits and all of this requires methodologies, technologies and an understanding of the terminologies for research. But, if you are not learning that as a student, when you are supported and scaffolded by someone who can help you when you make those mistakes, and help you to improve your practice and learn by doing, when are we supposed to do it?

There are arguments about there not being enough time in the course curriculum. Make the time - it is still a science degree. There is an argument that you will learn these skills at master’s level. Will everyone be doing master’s level work? Will the master’s actively teach you how to do research or be more related to a specific role?

Another argument I’ve seen for not having students doing research is to instead have a long project underpinned by research - that students will get the skills by reading papers on research and then writing a proposal based on that work. I’m sorry to burst the bubble but students don’t read everything that they reference in essays. 

Also, how many students can nail a lateral knee X-ray on their first attempt because they read about in Clark’s? They don’t. They learn by making a mistake, being shown how to correct it, and to do the X-ray again, but better.

In evolutionary biology there is a concept called the Red Queen hypothesis. The Red Queen deals with the fact that a species has to keep moving forward - it must constantly adapt and evolve because competition and the environment are constantly evolving and adapting as well. Without constant change the species will go extinct.

We are in the same position. We work in a dynamic and changing environment. If you have worked in radiography long enough, you will have seen multiple epoch moments throughout your career. From wet film radiography to cassette, to digital. From no extended or advanced practice to radiographers reporting and running scanning lists. 

We are currently in the rise of AI epoch and all the literature I’ve read about the development of AI mentions that the developing and research of AI systems should be done in conjunction with radiological departments, and radiographers are mentioned specifically.

This is something I get emotional about because the course that I have recently finished has just removed the undergraduate research project in their recent revaluation. I fought to keep that research project module for future students, in the student validation panel with other students. Was my student voice listened to? Was ours?

I was never very ambitious as a teacher; I’m very ambitious as a radiographer. However, I’m not personally ambitious, but I am ambitious for this profession because I see what it can be and where it can go.

I would like to finish with a quote from the TV show Vikings. When Ragnar is taking his sons Ubbe and Hvitserk with him, he sees them looking back at their home Kattegat. Ragnar goes to them and says “don’t waste your time looking back. You’re not going that way”. As a profession we need to keep looking and moving forward, and we should be supporting our students to be trained, engaged, supported and active in research.