Neuro-linguistic programming and learning: teacher case studies on the impact of NLP in education
John Carey
Richard Churches
A keen proponent of research in education, Richard was a natural choice to lead the National College's Closing the Gap: Test and Learn programme that Education Development Trust delivers. Richard has been lead national consultant on many UK government programmes including for the Department for Education and the National College for Teaching and Leadership and he has also worked with international ministries of education, working in a wide range of countries as a teacher, trainer and consultant. He is currently Programme Director for the Future Teaching Scholars programme.
Geraldine Hutchinson
Jeff Jones
Paul Tosey
This research paper reports evidence from 24 teacher-led action research case studies.
The current research focused on two gaps in the research literature:
- The absence of any formal and systematic literature review of evidence in relation to the impact and use of NLP in education
- The lack of any substantive teacher-led and classroom-based action research in this area.
Teachers followed the Teacher Learning Academy framework in designing and implementing their research – a framework that CfBT Education Trust was closely involved in the development of. All of the case studies demonstrate significant impact in relation to teacher development, with many demonstrating positive impacts on pupil learning outcomes. The paper also contains the first systematic and comprehensive literature review of research evidence into the impact of NLP in education and discusses the content of 111 papers and references including quantitative and qualitative research evidence. The majority of published work was found to be supportive of the use of NLP in schools and education although, as the authors point out, this should only be considered as an interim finding because of the wide range of methods used and variations in the quality of some of the research.