Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 113
i make confident personal use of a range of software packages and IT
devices appropriate to their subject specialism and age range;
ii review critically the relevance of software packages and IT devices
to their subject specialism and age range and judge the potential
value of these in classroom use;
iii make constructive use of IT in their teaching and in particular
prepare and put into effect schemes of work incorporating appropriate
uses of IT; and
iv evaluate the ways in which the use of IT changes the nature of
teaching and learning.
(DES 1989b: Circular 24/89)
Then, in the spring of 1990, NCET advertised the post of co-ordinator for a
project that had considerable similarities with the proposal I had sent them
the previous year. The person employed could either be based in Coventry
or remain in their current institution. I applied for the job and was
appointed, opting to remain based at CARE/UEA.
The project was to be called Initial Teacher Education and New
Technology (INTENT). As originally specified by NCET, five participating
teacher education institutions (TEIs) would each be given half the funding
to release a tutor from teaching for a year, provided they matched this to
release the tutor full time. The idea was that the tutor would support colleagues
in beginning to use IT in their teaching by working alongside them
very much in the way that the newly appointed subject specialist advisory
teachers were working with teachers in schools (see Chapter 4: 101). There
was to be support from a national co-ordinator and project secretary with a
budget to provide low-level additional funding for specific initiatives in the
TEIs, and NCET had a further budget to fund regular meetings of the project
team and publications arising from the work. The project would run for two
years and the co-ordinator, according to the original plan, would provide
support in year one and evaluate the impact of the initiative in year two.
In the fortnight or so after my appointment I worked with NCET to
develop and refine the research design, making changes which significantly
shaped the future project’s methodology and working practices. A key
feature of the re-designed project was that very senior managers would
become active participants, carrying out action research into their own role
in supporting change. The project would adopt ‘a research approach to
development’, continuing to carry out development work over two years
rather than one, led by a partnership of a staff development tutor (SDT,
funded in year one) and senior manager (without external funding) in each
TEI, who would both attend the residential project meetings; as co-ordinator
I was to work more holistically, combining support for development in
the TEIs with evaluation over the whole period. The participating institutions
were selected through a competitive tendering process in which, from