How can we assist teacher researchers to represent their own evolving knowledge? 
Mentoring for Leadership: developing our video narrative through action enquiry.
“A great deal of time and effort is being invested in the development of a professional knowledge base for teaching. We are committed to making the maximum use of this by spreading it through the system. This is called 'knowledge transfer' ... The challenges of collecting and validating knowledge of 'what works' are as nothing compared with that of transferring it across the system.... whilst knowledge is at the cutting edge of human development, it only has its mass effect through the invention and refinement of tools and artifacts which enhance the productivity of work or the quality of experience. In this view, all our efforts should be committed, not to the management of talking shops, but to the design and refinement of tools for learners - whether these be pupils or teachers. People will queue for effective tools; the problem of knowledge transfer will be dissolved." 
Desforges, C. (2004) keynote address to NCSL e-mentors, NCSL Headquarters, Nottingham, 23/09/04
Introduction:

The challenge we face as a profession is how to represent teachers’ knowledge about their work in a way that contextualises their ideas in others’ research. Researchers in education face the challenge of making their research accessible and relevant to what occurs in classrooms. They can take the lead in providing mentoring which can assist teachers to research their own work in a systematic way. The challenge teachers face is learning to take responsibility for their professional development in a way that enables themselves and others to improve pupils’ learning. By collaborating teachers and other researchers can assist one another to develop insights into how to teach and learn better. Over time, collaboration has a generative profession-wide impact so teacher researchers help one another through peer mentoring to develop leadership in teaching and learning. 

Context: 

Emma Kirby is an Advanced Skills Teacher in her fourth year of teaching at Hanham High School in Bristol. Sarah has mentored Emma since she was a PGCE student in the cohort she tutored at the University of Bath in 2000 at which point she decided to try an experiment.  Might introducing action research to PGCE trainees improve their own teaching?

Emma took on the challenge of studying for her MA as an NQT.  Sarah was her tutor. 
They continued their work together in a tutoring and mentoring context, funded by BPRS and TTA. Emma assisted Sarah in tutoring an MA Summer School in Mentoring in 2003 and tutoring novice teachers in Sarah’s PGCE cohort for Modern Foreign Languages in 2003. Though Sarah no longer works at the University of Bath, she sustains a mentoring relationship with Emma who has already been an induction tutor. Emma is assisting Sarah in developing MA modules for teacher-researchers at Bath Spa University College, They presented their research for the British Educational Research Association in 2003 and you can see their on-going collaborative work at http://www.TeacherResearch.net

Aims (in response to several questions from a Burning Issues forum):

Action Research Mentoring: An NCSL Innovations Unit Hot Seat debate 24/09/04
* How can we excite teachers to the idea of researching their own teaching and their own and their students' learning as an integral part of their professionalism?

* How can we create an on-line community of action research mentors who will assist teachers as leaders in learning in researching (and thereby improving) their practice?

* How can we develop some tools for learning-through-research that will enable teachers to access and use others' educational research?
Steps Taken:

1.	A review of ways currently available to teacher researchers to represent their research for accreditation at two higher education institutions was undertaken.

2.	Teachers were consulted about how they would like to present their research.

3.	Possible forms of representation were explored internationally at conferences.

4.	A review and audit of four years video footage taken by the Sarah and Emma was undertaken to see which clips and stills might be used to create a video narrative.

5.	Sarah interviewed Emma about her perspectives on leadership arising from being an Advanced Skills Teacher, who is currently participating an enquiry group in school.

6.	Sarah and Emma discussed several web-based formats for presenting Emma’s professional development as a teacher researcher. Sarah trialled several of these.

7.	Sarah assembled a snapshot of Emma’s research, set in an international context.

After trialling a number of templates including those accessible on iMac and university computing services homepages, Sarah selected the KEEP Toolkit Template that she had seen in use by teacher researchers at the International Conference on Teachers in 2004. 
The Carnegie Foundation website is a fund of useful information and the KEEP toolkit is supported by on-line help.  Response to enquiries is rapid and helpful.  There are several exemplars of completed web based snapshots and customising the template is very easy.

You can access KEEP as a free downloadable template and an on-line support service at

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/kml/keep/

You can access a snapshot of Emma’s research within a review of research mentoring at 

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/snapshot.php?id=28415937

Results and Analysis:

The creation of a snapshot using the KEEP Toolkit protocol was easy and enjoyable.  In about 12 hours the first draft was created and can now be accessed from the link above.  The KEEP toolkit is being updated and modified by the Carnegie Foundation at present and one hopes that it will include a spell checker and a greater capacity than 20 MB.

At present, the video that has been made with clips from footage from 4 years is too large and will not upload successfully.  The next stage in this action research project is to return to the video, see if it is possible to compress some of the clips as well as stills to enable the video to be part of the narrative and to speed loading time on web browsers. In the meantime there is a standalone CD of the video, which accompanies the snapshot.

Examples of Use

The Carnegie Toolkit is already being used by teachers internationally to represent their work.  We need presentations of snapshots to specifically represent aspects of leadership in schools, created by more school-based leaders in collaboration with research mentors. 
There is presently a dearth of resources about leadership created by teachers for teachers.

The beauty of the toolkit is its accessibility and potential for enabling individual as well as action enquiry groups within networked learning communities to disseminate research that is of direct use to raising the quality of teaching and learning in school classrooms. 

A generic toolkit is being designed for use at Bath Spa University College as part of the planned new MA Module entitled TT500MAR – MAR is mentoring and action research. The TT500M series of MA modules are specifically designed to attract teacher mentors to research their own work as part of their on-going professional development in school. Teachers will be able to submit their own web-based snapshots using a modified toolkit as a submission for 60 credits within their MA programme.  The snapshots can usefully be incorporated in presenting a professional portfolio as part of threshold negotiations.  

Evaluation:

This NCSL project offers a model for teacher researchers to display and disseminate their work in a way that can enliven and inform the teaching profession as a whole.  Imagine a network of such snapshots – on school website, linked through the internet in community. 
The snapshot that Emma and Sarah undertook in five days has already been transmitted to Japan, Croatia and China and to educators in the UK.  The Carnegie Foundation KEEP toolkit currently offers an appealing way for enabling the dynamic of classroom-based research by teachers which can be disseminated in and between networked communities. 
Despite an initially steep learning curve in amassing materials for the snapshot, learning to story board and transferring data to the toolkit, this has been a most satisfying project. 

Sarah Fletcher 20 February 2005