The next step was to work out a research agenda. The Region's shopping list of concerns related to the dilemmas of 'embedding' policy in school practice, and of encouraging schools to be 'proactive'. The Region also sought research input that could be fed directly into staff development, an aspect that the university department was keen to develop as part of a 'partnership' policy. The result was three case studies, the outcomes of which were fed back to the Region and to the schools concerned. There are a number of ways of addressing this.
Action research is cheap on money, but dear on time.
Teachers and researchers can choose to explore areas that national government does not prioritise. At local authority level there was less money than there was commitment. The major investment came at the professional levelteachers and researchers had to decide for themselves that it was worth doing. We would explain the difficulty in attracting any secondary teachers, or many primary ones, partly in terms of innovation overload in schools. This kind of action research involvement is based on professionals making an 'extended' rather than a 'restricted' definition of their role.