Staff development for research in a 'chilly climate'

These exercises have financial, organisational and strategic planning implications. The increasingly stipulative nature of what constitutes research, the value placed on collaborative or interdisciplinary research and the place of practitioner research and professional audience for practice based disciplines have been extensively discussed. Old divisions between high and low status institutions, the ranking of disciplines and research paradigms have tended to harden, with a Matthew Principle (to those who have shall be given) introducing new rigidities. The paper will draw on official documentation, and articles of both a professional and academic nature to contextualise the case study that follows.

Staff involved in initial teacher education (ITE) also experience increasing government intervention in the shape of a National Curriculum (NC) for schools and, more recently, of a NC for ITE itself, these initiatives also being subject to close and frequent inspection. The decade of pressure to perform as a researcher is paralleled by a decade of requiring staff to demonstrate flexibility in pedagogy, teaching content and realignment of partnerships with schools.

The demographic characteristics of Education staff in Britain - an ageing population with many nearing retirement, together with specific work cultures and identities - an enormously strong practitioner identity; heavy teaching loads; primary commitment to teaching; a short history of being research active; an academic world where of action research or evaluation may be considered less valid than other paradigms; the low level of funding for educational research are all important considerations. Drawing on five years experience of strategic responsibility for building research capacity within the college and in Education most specifically - by supporting and developing staff, developing research student capacity and undertaking research - I shall discuss issues of culture; desire; autonomy and control; and the openings for and limits to flexibility.

Against the backdrop depicted, of increasing surveillance, control and inflexibility at a system level (a 'chilly climate'), the paper describes and discusses issues relating to staff development for research in a single Faculty of Education in a College of Higher Education, an institution created in 1990 by the amalgamation of two former teacher training colleges and the degree level work of a college of arts and technology. The college has both undergraduate and research degree awarding powers and is currently pursuing formal university status, a process involving demonstrating a strong and vibrant research culture (based on students and staff). Traditionally there has not been a strong tradition of research among teacher trainers out with universities, though that picture is rapidly changing, both nationally and in the college under study. These external and internal circumstances provide potent and sometimes contradictory pressures to perform as teacher and researcher at college, faculty, team and individual level which are the focus for this paper.