In this session we looked at

Progression on projects- this seemed to be going well with a balance of interests looking at the curriculum and others taking on the wide issue of departmental development. We decided that literature review was probably, but not necessarily, included as part of the reconnaissance. We raised again the idea of drawing out the implications of the project at the end of your report for different audiences - for example what would you like to tell yourself about the project; your pupils’ your colleagues; your school; and at a wider level the academic community and of course the government?

We felt it important not to airbrush out the ‘false starts’ -things you started but decided not to follow through on. These were important in the development of the project.

Presentations: a clamour to see Gareth’s videos and for him to produce a video guide to producing your own videos. Steve raised for us the idea of focusing on the department change and this was picked up in the VLE work by Pete and Chris. Alistair raised the idea that innovations may address a difficulty but will have differentiated outcomes – they may appeal to a different constituency and lose the ones which were happy with things as they were.

The presentations raised the issue of evaluation and we looked at this more generally. It was important to evaluate your project on its own terms – or the goals that you had set yourself. For example if you have not set out to improve GCSE grades test scores (as say would be the case in a project aiming to improve revision techniques) they are unlikely to be a good measurer of your outcomes. (Of course such outcomes may be worth exploring and throw some kind of light onto things in some cases but the relationship between innovation and test outcomes is likely to be complex).

We look at an example in Jude’s thesis in which she had set out objectives and produced a table to capture the evidence as to how these had been met (pages 2- 3) of the handout.

Providing explanations

There is a limit as to how far you want to go on this but some kind of explanation for outcomes is useful. We looked at examples of

Networks of factors page 4 from paper [1]

Modelling outcomes (page 5) from paper [2]

Plain text (albeit factors are highlighted and a hierarchy of factors suggested [paper 3]

[1] Fragkouli, E. and Hammond, M. (2007) Issues in developing programmes to support teachers of philology in using information and communications technologies in Greek schools: a case study, Journal of In-Service Education, 33, 4, 463-477.

[2] Cartwright, V., & Hammond, M. (2007). 'Fitting it in': a study exploring ICT use in a UK primary school. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 23(2), 390-407.

[3] Hammond, M., Crosson, S., Fragkouli, E., Ingram, J., Johnston-Wilder, P., Johnston-Wilder, S., et al. (2009). Why do some student teachers make very good use of ICT? An exploratory case study. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 18(1).

There was quite a lot of interest in the network of factors idea which had its core the problems of planning, implementation, outcomes and consequences.

We felt it important in providing explanations to capture the outcomes in general terms. For example it was successful in achieving x but less successful in achieving y. Colleagues perceptions are likely to be differentiated and you may want to take examples of enthusiasts / resistors rather than suggest a general explanation for a general outcome.

Finally we looked at the idea of front piece for the projects which would sum the projects up for an internal audience – a kind of abstract which could be made generally available.

Next session

• Presentations for those who have not so far done this
• Cake!
• Reflection on the MA
• Graduation