The project:

MESH (Mapping Educational Specialist knowHow) is a global, teacher-led knowledge exchange platform that provides freely accessible, updatable research summaries called MESHGuides for educators worldwide. MESH is an online knowledge exchange platform that provides research summaries. It is a sustainable low-cost system for teachers worldwide to resolve the problem of access to research knowledge. All educators and organisations can contribute, garner global traction and reach for their research, build impact, and collectively address UNESCO SDG 4 .

MESH is a worldwide network of academic educators working voluntarily, to share freely, research-based knowledge and evidence with policy makers, research funders, teachers, parents and the public. The key outputs of the network are MESHGuides published in a research-based online resource bank, developed by academic volunteers that has currently a total of 737,600 users producing 1,459,321 interactions with the platform in more than 200 countries.

MESH is a teacher/researcher led, international, knowledge exchange system for teachers using digital tools to keep costs low. MESHGuides are research summaries, updated periodically, written for teachers.

The MESH system was presented at the UNESCO Teacher Task Force Global Policy Dialogue Forum in Lome, Togo, September 2017 and as a result worldwide, voluntary partnerships are putting the ideas into practice. All educators and organisations can contribute, so collectively we can achieve UNESCO SDG 4 .

By harnessing the power of technologies as well as existing research knowledge to:
Build a professional knowledge base of research summaries for teachers’ practice
Maximise accumulation of knowledge and research impact and minimise duplication
Publish research summaries as online knowledge maps that are updateable and sustainable.

WHY is this needed?

• Teachers need to keep up-to-date with the latest research.

• To improve the quality of teaching by keeping teachers’ knowledge updated the MESH system is testing

• Pooling quality-assured knowledge for teachers (subject content and pedagogy)

• Providing open access, updatable, trusted, research summaries.

Extra benefits:

• Saving money by mobilising knowledge through technology giving efficiencies of scale and reach.

• Supporting the UN’s SDG4 goals.

Everyone can help

• Governments, charities and policy makers are asked to: value/require/encourage/co-ordinate MESHGuide research summary production; join the MESH Advisory Board

• Universities are asked to: require MESHGuide contributions from Masters/PhD theses and research staff

• Individual educators/professional organisations are asked to: to use/contribute to MESHGuides as researchers or reviewers

• Potential funders are asked to fund research networks to pool knowledge in their areas of interest.

The MESH project is led by Professor Sarah Younie at De Montfort University, working with partner universities and professional teacher organisations, including ICET (International Council on Education for Teaching), UNESCO ITTF (International Teacher Task Force), GNDE (Global Network of Deans for Education), TPEA (Technology, Pedagogy and Education Association).