The History of the 'SUPER' Project
The 'Schools-University Partnership for Educational Research' was initially funded by the Wallenberg Research Centre for the Improvement of Education, based at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. The 'SUPER' Project addressed the national concern about the perceived lack of impact of the outcomes of educational research in the context of the Research Schools Partnership. It seeks to describe and document, analyse and interpret, conceptualise and understand and report on:'
- the evolving relationships between Partnership schools and between Partnership schools and UCSE;
- emerging practice-based research issues;
- practice based research processes; their outcomes and effects.
The 'SUPER' Project aims to:
- observe, describe and document, analyse, interpret, conceptualise, understand and report on the processes, outcomes and effects of the practice-based research work undertaken within the evolving partnership;
- achieve these tasks by addressing an agenda of questions (a selection of which are listed below);
- concentrate, as a priority, on questions about understanding how a systemic research culture might be created within and across the Research Schools Partnership;
- compare issues that arise from within the Research Schools Partnership with those being reported from Partnership projects elsewhere;
- use developing understandings of the processes and outcomes of the work undertaken within the Research Schools Partnership to facilitate its constructive development
- disseminate the outcomes of the practice-based research work of the Research Schools Partnership as widely as possible by appropriate means
The 'SUPER' Project sets out to achieve its aims by addressing an agenda of questions of which the following is a selection:
- Within the Research Schools Partnership, what kinds of research knowledge do schools and teachers value and find useful, in what ways and why?
- How, within the Research Schools Partnership, can the different rhythms and pacing of academic research, and those of a busy school life be productively combined?
- What mechanisms can be found to make research knowledge from one school in the Partnership readily and attractively accessible to another (face to face meetings, hard copy newsletter, e-mail, website, CD Rom etc.)?
- How, within the Research Partnership Schools, can full time teachers be, and feel themselves to be, full partners in the research processes?
- How, within the Research Schools Partnership can the conduct and findings of practice-based research be both rigorous and at the same time couched in a form meaningful and accessible to practitioners?
- How, within the Research Schools Partnership, can research WITH teachers best be facilitated from within and without schools?
- What claims and justifications are made for research within the Research Schools Partnership contributing to the enhanced learning of students?
- What, within the Research Schools Partnership, alternative ways of organising/timing/pacing of teaching and learning are being tried? How do senior staff facilitate such changes?
- How, within the Research Schools Partnership, does useful practice-based knowledge combine with other sorts of professional knowledge?