ABSTRACT
During the lifetime of the LHTL project, educational networks became the subject of much discussion, nationally; indeed, considerable funding went into their establishment, most notably through the establishment of networked learning communities (NLCs) supported by the National Centre for School Leadership (NCSL). The experience of these
NLCs was drawn upon by the DfES Innovation Unit in setting up Primary Learning Networks, and by Hargreaves (2004) in launching networks of secondary schools through the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. All these initiatives were taken after we had embarked on our project, but before we completed it. Before this time there had been so little research on school networks – our project is, we believe, the first substantial study – that we incline to the view that the imperative to implement ran ahead of the production of the empirical evidence that might properly inform such innovation. The argument for school network development tended to be based on literature from the business world, and especially IT companies, on the assumption that their experience would transfer, broadly, to the school sector (see Hargreaves, 2003a and 2004).
