ABSTRACT
In this section I explain my work context and how I came to be involved in organisation study and began to appreciate its implications for practice.
In 1992 I was invited to act as consultant to a Schools Based Action Research Project (SBARP), a teacher education project developed by a small private college of education in Ireland. This was in response to a national survey whose findings indicated that, while new curriculum developments recommended a student-centred approach to classroom methodologies, these methodologies were still largely didactic and teacher-centred (Marino Institute of Education, 1992). Teachers seemed to lack confidence in turning the espoused values of participation and the development of students’ intellectual independence into practice. The SBARP project identified its aim as helping teachers learn how to do this, and to evaluate whether they were having any influence on the quality of learning in schools and colleges.
