Introduction

This chapter gives an account of research procedures, to open them to scrutiny, debate and further engagement. The recent school reform literature views the valuing of teachers, through strong support for their professional development in school and systemic policies, as the central element in effective school reform. The spatial location of a school, both materially and metaphorically, has strong predictive influence on classroom experience, and this needs to be acknowledged in any study of teachers’ practices. The Productive Pedagogies Research had direct intellectual links with the School Restructuring Study undertaken by the University of Wisconsin’s Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (CORS) in the USA between 1991 and 1994. The CORS study was a comprehensive examination of interrelationships among what Fred Newmann and his colleagues came to refer to as four ‘circles of support’. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.