In this chapter we describe how the T-MEDIA research process enabled us to explore how the participating history teacher used the interactive whiteboard (IWB) along with other resources to mediate learning in his classroom – and how development of the team’s shared understandings contributed to the formulation of intermediate theory (as outlined in Chapter 1).

The focus and methods of the T-MEDIA project and the development and structure of the resulting multimedia CPD resources were described in Chapter 1. Subsequent chapters have described the process of how two of us as university researchers worked closely with the teachers to develop intermediate theory. Chapter 8 then investigated the extent to which the ideas and practices developed by the T-MEDIA teachers were later taken up or adapted by other teachers.

PurposeThis paper, taking a participatory perspective of learning, seeks to look at the interaction between individuals and their workplace, focusing on the perceptions of workplaces and self by beginning teachers in terms of support for their learning.Design/methodology/approachThe study presents an analysis of 37 interviews from 17 beginning teachers across 18 workplaces. Analysis used an adapted version of Evans and colleagues' expansive‐restrictive framework for evaluating workplaces, focusing on relational aspects. A matrix of congruence between individuals and their workplace is presented, highlighting the significance of personal networking.FindingsAlthough beginning teachers concluded that their workplaces were largely expansive, they also identified concerns regarding perceptions of support availability. Formal and informal support was recognized and the significance of outside school support, such as through the University Faculty, was noted even for teachers in post. Good “matches”, differential engagement with the same workplace and similar agency in different workplaces were identified.Practical implicationsThe matrix of congruence is offered as a tool to researchers and teacher educators interested in understanding how support is experienced by novice professionals. The study highlights the utility of taking a personal network perspective to conceiving workplaces as not necessarily bounded by locality or normative practices. This could offer opportunities for discourse leading to greater engagement by professionals in their own learning.Originality/valueThe paper responds to calls that personal‐social processes in the workplace need further attention. The consideration of network perspectives, attending to informal aspects of social engagement, offers new understandings.

The quest to understand what it means to 'become' a teacher and the conditions in which such aspirations can be translated into lived experience, continues to exercise teacher educators and researchers alike. Whilst the literature points towards the importance of developing teacher identity, little attention has been given to understanding the transitional processes of individuals coming into teaching at a later point in their working lives. The research reported here was part of a wider project investigating the experiences of early career science teachers. In this study we follow one mature, highly qualified science graduate as she moved through initial teacher education and beyond into her first teaching post. Drawing on theories of identity and self-verification, the analysis reveals how disparity between strongly-held archetypal teacher images and socially constructed teacher identity played out and led this teacher to step away from her new career. Fostering a strong sense of self-efficacy is suggested as critical in supporting mid-career changers in making durable adjustments to new working roles and contexts of teaching.

This paper illuminates the experiences of beginning teachers using a participatory perspective approach and drawing on some of these teachers’ perceptions. We place the ‘subject’ of workplace learning research centrally in understanding the relatedness between workplaces and novice employees/trainees. This paper builds on previous work by the authors using semi-structured interviews with 17 beginning teachers in 19 schools that aim to better understand issues associated with beginning teacher retention. This study explores an application of a framework for evaluating workplaces as from expansive to restrictive learning environments, whilst examining individuals’ responses to and agency in these environments. In addition, these teachers’ personal networks were explored to idedntify how they shaped the teachers’ engagement with workplaces. This analysis revealed networks both internal and external to their schools, and hence a broader view of workplace than is often proposed. Together these analyses allowed an examination of the relatedness between individual beginning teachers and the schools they experienced. This paper identifies the significance of ontogeny and expectation that individuals bring to the workplace, along with individuals exhibiting different agency. These beginning teachers indicate how individuals can be proactive in creating more expansive learning environments for themselves through the utilisation of personal networks, even when these are not offered. This finding may have implications for beginning teachers to re-evaluate their potential to become empowered as they begin their careers.

Background/Context This work draws on a “participatory” approach to research collaboration that respects the teacher's “voice” in building on and extending the interactive “colearning” agreements between researchers and practitioners that work toward improving practice. Both parties in these agreements act as agents of (reflexive) inquiry, actively participating in rigorous and systematic joint analysis and contributing interpretative insights. Focus of Study This article describes and reflects on a collaborative approach to the analysis of digital video recordings of classroom activity. Our primary focus was assisting teachers to make explicit the pedagogical rationale underlying their practice. A key aim was to draw on sociocultural perspectives to develop a shared, grounded account of the processes through which teachers strategically mediate subject learning, in the context of using projection technology. The process of collaboration itself is our focus here. Participants Four UK teachers, one in each of four secondary subject areas (English, mathematics, science and history), and their students aged 12–15, took part in the research. The teachers were all experienced, reflective practitioners. The research collaboration also involved a colleague of each teacher, two researchers (the authors), and academic subject specialist colleagues. Research Design A case study design was used to collect qualitative observational data. Data Collection and Analysis Teachers were observed over six lessons each and interviewed four times. They also collaborated with us in critical scrutiny and discussion of lesson videos during a series of four recorded meetings, making underlying rationale explicit and identifying emerging themes. Student perspectives were sought through two focus group interviews in each case. Copies of student work and all lesson materials and outlines were collected, screen displays were captured, and each teacher kept a diary (unstructured) recording his or her planning, decision making, and/or postlesson reflections. Interview transcripts, individual commentary, meeting notes, and diaries were thematically analyzed using HyperResearch software. Findings The dialogic process culminated in development of “intermediate theory” bridging between teachers’ perspectives on supporting learning in specific settings, and key constructs from sociocultural theory. Hence, a priori theories were elaborated, integrated, and reframed using a common language. Conclusions/Recommendations The findings are being exploited through coconstruction and dissemination of a set of interactive CD-ROMs. These characterize the key themes and strategies emerging within and across cases, with illustrative video sequences for each case in turn hyperlinked to professional development activities and relevant aspects of the narrative accounts.

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have rapidly become an integral feature of many classrooms across the UK and elsewhere, but debate continues regarding the pedagogical implications of their use. This article reports on an in‐depth case‐study from the wider T‐MEDIA project (Teacher Mediation of Subject Learning with ICT: a Multimedia Approach). A key aim of the study was to draw upon sociocultural perspectives to develop a shared, grounded theoretical account of the processes through which teachers mediate subject learning incorporating use of the IWB and other resources. A series of six history lessons with a class of pupils aged 12–13 was videoed and analysed collaboratively by a university research team, the teacher, one of his colleagues and an academic subject specialist. We identify an emerging emphasis upon interdependent learning relationships in the classroom and illustrate how this particular teacher harnessed IWB technology to support a dialogic approach to knowledge construction in history. Strategies included communicating and developing complex ideas and modelling historical thinking processes through use of multiple digital resources; collaborative annotation of images and texts; spotlighting and reveal tools for focusing; and ‘drag and drop’ for classification activities. Revisiting annotated slides served to draw on shared experience.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements This study arose from research supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The ‘T‐MEDIA’ project analysed and documented how teachers exploit the use of projection technologies – data projectors and interactive whiteboards (IWBs) – to support learning in secondary‐school subject lessons. The research involved collaboration between university researchers and four pairs of UK teachers (of English, mathematics, science and history) in an intensive process of systematically analysing video recordings of classroom activity and other data in depth. Our goals were to assist teachers in articulating the pedagogical rationale underlying their practice, and uniquely, to engage them in theory building about strategic technology use. This paper reports on a follow‐up study carried out one year after the collaborative analyses in order to assess the subsequent impacts of the process of critical reflection. The eight teachers were questioned using a semi‐structured interview technique that allowed us to elicit structured and personalised accounts of impact on pedagogical thinking and practice and the supporting or constraining factors. The findings suggest that for at least some, the sociocultural theory introduced and reformulated during the analyses provided a powerful analytical lens upon emerging practices, including those not incorporating technology. All of the participants reported lasting effects upon their own thinking and, except where external constraints operated, on teaching practices. The approaches developed during T‐MEDIA had additionally been disseminated to and adapted by other subject colleagues. The study illustrates how collaborative analysis of lesson videos can be used to engage teachers in deep reflection, critique and debate. This approach supports the development of an analytical scrutiny of classroom teaching and offers a significant professional development opportunity. In particular, under conditions of sensitive support, teachers will readily accommodate theoretical constructs into specific areas of professional thinking and practice.

From preliminary analysis of teacher-nominated examples of successful technology-supported practice in secondary-school mathematics, the use of graphing software to teach about algebraic forms was identified as being an important archetype. Employing evidence from lesson observation and teacher interview, such practice was investigated in greater depth through case study of two teachers each teaching two lessons of this type. The practitioner model developed in earlier research (Ruthven & Hennessy, Educational Studies in Mathematics 49(1):47–88, 2002; Micromath 19(2):20–24, 2003) provided a framework for synthesising teacher thinking about the contribution of graphing software. Further analysis highlighted the crucial part played by teacher prestructuring and shaping of technology-and-task-mediated student activity in realising the ideals of the practitioner model. Although teachers consider graphing software very accessible, successful classroom use still depends on their inducting students into using it for mathematical purposes, providing suitably prestructured lesson tasks, prompting strategic use of the software by students and supporting mathematical interpretation of the results. Accordingly, this study has illustrated how, in the course of appropriating the technology, teachers adapt their classroom practice and develop their craft knowledge: particularly by establishing a coherent resource system that effectively incorporates the software; by adapting activity formats to exploit new interactive possibilities; by extending curriculum scripts to provide for proactive structuring and responsive shaping of activity; and by reworking lesson agendas to take advantage of the new time economy.

The idea of 'interpretative flexibility' underpins new approaches to studying technological artefacts and curricular resources in use. This paper opens by reviewing – in this light – the evolving design of dynamic geometry, its pioneering use within classroom projects, and early sketches of its mainstream use in ordinary classrooms. After examining curricular context and its instrumental dimension, the paper then reports a study of teacher constructions of dynamic geometry in classroom practice, conducted in professionally well-regarded mathematics departments in English secondary schools. From departmental focus-group interviews, four teacher-nominated examples of successful practice were selected for study in depth through lesson observation and post-lesson interview. Iterative thematic analysis was employed, first to establish a narrative outline of each case, and then the ideas and issues salient across cases. The study illustrates the interpretative flexibility surrounding the emergent use of dynamic geometry. It found important differences in practical elaboration of the widespread idea of employing dynamic geometry to support guided discovery. The process of evaluating the costs and benefits of student software use was influenced by the extent to which such use was seen as providing experience of a mathematical reference model, and more fundamentally as promoting mathematically disciplined interaction. Approaches to handling apparent mathematical anomalies of software operation depended on whether these were seen as providing opportunities to develop students' mathematical understanding, in line with a more fundamental pedagogical orientation towards supporting learning through analysis of mathematical discrepancies. Such variation was associated with differences in positioning dynamic geometry in relation to curricular norms and in privileging a mathematical register for framing figural properties. Across all cases, however, incorporating dynamic manipulation into mathematical discourse moved implicitly beyond established norms when dragging was used to focus attention on continuous dynamic variation, rather than being treated as an efficient means of generating multiple static figures.

This study took place in a climate of an intensified focus on approaches to whole school improvement through ‘embedding’ technology in teaching, learning and management. It examined the evolution over time of classroom practice supported by information and communication technology (ICT) and its wider implementation within and outside of subject departments. Three years earlier a group of teachers in five secondary schools in England had participated in a collaborative programme of ten small‐scale research projects in which they developed a range of pedagogical strategies involving use of ICT. These spanned six main Curriculum areas: English, classics, geography, history, science and technology, plus a language support group. The present study investigated the extent of development and dissemination of these practices over time, and identified the underlying mechanisms and supportive or constraining factors. This follow‐up study comprised an interview survey of the 16 teachers and nine of their colleagues. Pedagogical approaches to using new technologies proved to be robust over time, to be spreading from subject teachers to their colleagues, and to be integrated into departmental schemes of work. However, findings indicated that evolution of practice depends on adequate access to reliable resources, and development of ICT as a school priority in turn leads to soliciting further resources and expanding practice. Individual teachers’ confidence, skills and motivation towards using ICT to promote learning develop in response to other contextual factors, most prominently a supportive organizational culture and a collegial environment, and they play a critical role in the processes of developing and disseminating new practice. These processes are thus complex and iterative.

This study aimed to extend the currently limited understanding of how pedagogy is developing in response to the influx of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in schools in the UK and some other countries. A case study approach was employed to investigate how experienced classroom practitioners are beginning to harness the functionality of this technology to support learning in science. The methods included focus group interviews with four secondary science departments, plus lesson observations and interviews with two teachers and their pupils. We analysed the data from a sociocultural perspective on learning, focusing on the strategies that teachers used to exploit the dynamic, manipulable objects of joint reference and annotative tools afforded by the technology to foster the cognitive, social and physical participation of learners in whole‐class activity. The case study teachers demonstrated contrasting approaches to designing and supporting activity in which pupils shared, evaluated and developed ideas using the IWB. Pupil manipulation of objects on the IWB was deemed desirable but—along with pedagogical interactivity—was constrained by systemic school and subject cultures, curricular and assessment frameworks. Observed and potential opportunities for active cognitive and social participation are outlined.

The two separate projects described have examined how teachers exploit computer-based technologies in supporting learning of science at secondary level. This paper examines how pedagogical approaches associated with these technological tools are adapted to both the cognitive and structuring resources available in the classroom setting. Four teachers participated in the first study, undertaken as part of the InterActive Education project in Bristol; all of them used multimedia simulations in their lessons. The second study presented was part of the wider SET-IT project in Cambridge; 11 teachers in eight schools were observed using multimedia simulations, data logging tools and interactive whiteboards. Teachers were interviewed in all cases to elicit their pedagogical thinking about their classroom use of ICT.The findings suggest that teachers are moving away from only using ‘real’ experiments in their practice. They are exploring the use of technologies to encourage students to engage in “What If” explorations where the outcomes of ‘virtual’ experiments can be immediately accessed, for example through using a simulation. However, this type of activity can serve just as a mechanism for revealing – and indeed reinforcing – students’ informal conceptions if cognitive conflict is not generated or remains unresolved. The teachers in our studies used simulations, data logging, projected animations and other dynamic digital resources as tools to encourage and support prediction and to demonstrate scientific concepts and physical processes – thereby ‘bridging the gap’ between scientific and informal knowledge. They also integrated technology carefully with other practical activities so as to support stepwise knowledge building, consolidation and application.Research of this kind has design implications for both curriculum-related activities and emerging computer-based learning technologies, in terms of helping us to understand how teachers capitalise upon the technology available in supporting students to construct links between scientific theory and empirical evidence.

AbstractThe questionnaire survey reported in this paper is part of an ongoing evaluation of the effect of a bursary scheme on recruitment to Cambridge University. It sought to identify factors that encouraged or discouraged highly successful A Level students from applying to Cambridge. Findings reveal three main dimensions associated with the decision to apply to Cambridge, the nature of the courses, the prestige of the university and anxiety about the application process combined with fear of failure. Further analyses showed that there were complex interactions between these three dimensions which governed the decision to apply to Cambridge. These findings are relevant to other prestigious universities. The availability of a bursary did appear to influence the decisions of those who were eligible, but its influence was not as great as some of the other factors.

This article examines teachers' ‘practical theories’ concerning the contribution of information and communications technology (ICT) to teaching and learning, as they are elaborated and refined in action. The study arose from a collaborative programme of 10 small‐scale projects through which participating teacher‐researchers aimed to develop a range of pedagogic strategies involving the use of computer‐based ICTs within their subject areas (Classics, English, Geography, History, Science and Design Technology). Within‐ and cross‐case analyses drew on multiple sources of data and characterised teachers' initial statements of practical theory in terms of five key themes: broadening classroom resources and reference; enhancing working processes and products; fostering more independent pupil activity; mediating subject thinking and learning; and improving pupil motivation towards lessons. Three cases are presented to illustrate how teachers developed their ideas in action, and issues that prompted teachers across cases to adapt their approaches are discussed.

This article reports on findings from the ESRC- funded SET-IT project, which investigated how experienced secondary science teachers in England are integrating ICT into their classroom practice. Data are drawn from ten focus-group interviews and four detailed case studies in three schools. Examples illustrate how teachers blended use of datalogging with other activities and harnessed its features to encourage pupil participation and collaborative knowledge- building in whole-class settings. Successful strategies included use of prediction and joint interpretation of outcomes to address pupils' conceptions and build the 'scientific story'. Practical approaches to managing the use of the technology are also suggested. Recording and handling experimental data through use of sensing equipment is part of the National Curriculum for England and use of datalogging systems is widespread in secondary school science departments. In a review of the impact of government initiatives relating to information and communication technology (ICT) in schools, Ofsted (2004) asserted that its use in science teaching and learning enables 'a higher level of analysis to take place than would otherwise be the case'. The contribution of datalogging systems is highlighted as allowing pupils 'to focus more quickly on the graphical results of their science experiments' (p. 41). However, while the potential benefits of the technology in supporting pupil investigations are widely recognised (Newton, 2000), teacher demonstration seems the most common mode of use (Rogers and Finlayson, 2003). The role of the teacher is pivotal in determining how effectively ICT is used to enrich science teaching and learning (Osborne and Hennessy, 2003). Identifying and understanding the strategies that underlie successful practice is central to the contemporary quest for well-informed approaches to effective applications in the curriculum (Becta, 2003). In this article we present four case studies to illustrate how experienced practitioners are supporting learning using datalogging systems within their classroom settings.

This study explored teachers’ pedagogical strategies for using multimedia simulation to structure and support secondary science teaching. Expertise was investigated across a range of classroom settings to analyse how specialist knowledge is situated within and adapted to the teaching and learning context. Analysis of data arising from 10 lesson observations and post‐lesson interviews with five teachers and their pupils highlighted significant variation in pedagogical approaches shaping simulation use in three topic areas. Two contrasting case studies involving a “terminal velocity” simulation exemplify this: one was characterized by some “dialogic” whole class interaction and collaborative testing of pupils’ own ideas; the other by a more typical, more authoritative, discourse with pupil pairs. Over‐structuring of tasks and curricular constraints meant that the rhetoric in the literature and teachers’ aspirations concerning pupil experimentation balanced with structured tasks were not borne out. Implications for mode of use and the design of technology‐integrated activity are discussed.