Action Research and Radical Change in Schools 1

4 Action Research and Radical Change in Schools 1

How do schools respond to the challenge of new educational policies? In the 1980s desktop computers, called ‘microcomputers’ at the time, arrived in schools as the result of initiatives such as the Microelectronics Education Programme, the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative and the Department of Trade and Industry’s Micros in School Scheme. (See the end of this chapter for some further information on these three initiatives.) During this period I was working at the Cambridge Institute of Education on a project funded by Norfolk and Suffolk LEAs, called the Support for Innovation Project, which supported senior managers of large secondary schools in providing school-based professional development for their staff to help them cope with the challenges and stress of a multiplicity of new initiatives.

The arrival of computers was just one of these. While a teacher myself

I had become an action researcher as a participant in the TIQL Project (see Chapter 3) and had later focused my masters dissertation on experimental work with word processors with my ‘first year’ English class (11 year olds).

I had since, as part of a secondment to Netherhall Software, a co-operative group of teachers and computer programmers (staff and ex-pupils of the Netherhall School), worked alongside the Cambridgeshire LEA team that trained two teachers from each primary school in how to use the new com- puter acquired through the DTI scheme. I saw the stress computers caused vividly one day when I sat beside an experienced teacher who jumped with anxiety and uttered a startled cry because the computer gave a loud ‘bleep’ when she pressed a key. Knowing the difficulty for teachers and schools in adopting new initiatives; the excitement and professional growth I had experienced through carrying out action research in my own classroom and school; the stress that computers were causing many teachers but also the

1 I would like to thank Bob Davidson, Jon Pratt, Erica Brown and Lorna Tickner, and all the teachers who worked on the PALM project, for their enormous contribution to the ideas con-

tained in this chapter.

90 ACTION RESEARCH way in which my own computer was already transforming my own working

practices; I wrote a proposal to the newly established Microelectronics Support Unit (MESU) for an action research project to be called Pupil Autonomy in Learning with Microcomputers – the PALM Project.

This chapter reflects back on the PALM project, telling its story, cele- brating the achievements of the participants and noting its shortcomings and the reasons for them. The chapter is written from my own point of view, but PALM was a project that was personally experienced and owned by a large number of teachers and by the LEA inspectors and my colleagues in the project team. It had powerful impacts at many different levels. The aim of the chapter is to give readers some of the excitement of taking part in such a project and suggest how a similar initiative could take place today – including what would have to be done differently. Although PALM focused upon the specific innovation of using computers for teaching, the final section provides a commentary that is relevant to all large-scale action research projects set up in a similar way with external funding and leader- ship from a university-based central team.