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Introduction: Technological
development, capacity building and
knowledge construction in education
research
a
Patrick Carmichael
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University of Cambridge , 1st Floor, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2
1SB, UK E-mail:
Published online: 25 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Patrick Carmichael (2007) Introduction: Technological development, capacity
building and knowledge construction in education research, Technology, Pedagogy and Education,
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 Technology, Pedagogy and Education
Vol. 16, No. 3, October 2007, pp. 235–247

Introduction: Technological
development, capacity building
and knowledge construction in
education research
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Technology,
10.1080/14759390701614355
RTPE_A_261286.sgm
1475-939X
Original
Taylor
302007
16
patrick@caret.cam.ac.uk
PatrickCarmichael
00000October
and
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Francis
Francis
(print)/1747-5139
Pedagogy
2007
Ltd and Education
(online)

Introduction
This special edition of Technology, Pedagogy and Education brings together a group of
papers from projects of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Teaching and
Learning Research Programme (TLRP) and the Applied Educational Research
Scheme of Scotland (AERS). Several papers are concerned with the technological
infrastructures developed by these research programmes with support from the Centre
for Applied Research in Educational Technologies at the University of Cambridge
(CARET). CARET staff include both education researchers and software developers,
and this combination, together with continuing partnerships with the TLRP and
AERS, has led to a coordinated process of research and development in ‘e-Research’
for Education, some of the results of which will be presented in this edition. The papers
presented here do not, however, deal only with research and development in the
context of large-scale funded research projects in higher education. With the devel-
opment of social software and semantic web applications; interest about service provi-
sion, interoperability and reuse across a rapidly developing Internet; and a concern to
develop sustainable communities of researchers, participants and research ‘users’, the
approaches and findings described in this issue have broader relevance and application.
Facilities such as digital repositories and virtual collaboration environments represent
one element of a new educational landscape in which schools, colleges and workplaces
are not simply consumers but creators of knowledge; and technology-enhanced
research approaches have a role across sectors and settings, adding to the resources
and repertoire of all involved in educational research, development and innovation.

The TLRP and AERS

The TLRP is a coordinated programme of research and development funded by the
UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) which, since 2000, has involved

ISSN 1475-939X (print)/ISSN 1747-5139 (online)/07/030235–13

© 2007 Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education
DOI: 10.1080/14759390701614355
 236 P. Carmichael

over 500 researchers, 70 projects and the establishment of research fellowships, semi-
nar series and other activities. Described by its director, Andrew Pollard, as a
programme of education research for ‘moral purposes’ (Pollard, 2002), the TLRP
supports research in all sectors of the formal education system, as well as informal,
workplace and lifelong learning. There are TLRP projects in England, Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the majority involve researchers from more than
one institution. User engagement in projects is encouraged from the outset; this
ranges from projects establishing advisory groups, through more formal partnerships
with other organisations, to involvement of participants as co-researchers in project
activities. The range of projects can be gauged by visiting the TLRP web site
(www.tlrp.org), where all projects maintain a ‘gateway’ web site, often linked to a
more substantial project web site hosted elsewhere. The TLRP is committed to
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improving the skills, knowledge and confidence of researchers and since its inception
it has invested in a programme of research capacity-building activities, reviewed by
Baron (2005). Since the intention is that these should generate resources and support
processes which will outlive the TLRP (funding for which in its present form will
cease in 2008), technological tools and approaches such as digital repositories, virtual
collaboration environments and support for online teaching and learning will also be
significant elements of TLRP’s lasting legacy.
As the TLRP has grown, the need for an electronic infrastructure to support
multi-institutional projects and programme-wide activities has increased, and at the
same time the programme has been keen to identify opportunities to use Internet
technologies as part of an engagement and dissemination strategy involving
research participants and research ‘users’ ranging from practitioners to policy-
makers. Two papers in this edition (Laterza et al. and Procter) describe aspects of
the large-scale infrastructure which has been established to support and enhance
research processes, user engagement and research impact across the TLRP and the
‘users’ of its research. Laterza et al. describe how the ‘Sakai: A Virtual Research
Environment for Education’ project (an associate project of the TLRP funded for
two years by the Joint Information Systems Committee, JISC) has involved
researchers and software developers at CARET, in the deployment, development
and evaluation of the use of the Sakai Virtual Collaboration Environment as a
‘Virtual Research Environment’ (VRE) for research projects within the TLRP.
They report how use of this online environment has reflected variation in project
design and ‘lifecycles’, which account for periods of intensive online collaboration
separated by periods of only limited VRE use. Similarly, variations in the role and
responsibilities of project participants are reflected in patterns of VRE organisation
and use. Projects with a commitment to involvement of practitioner-researchers
and support for ‘communities of enquiry’ characteristically use distinctive combina-
tions of online tools oriented towards discussion and collaboration activities, while
for others the principal role of the VRE is to provide a secure central resource bank,
data repository or library of project documents. The question of how to provide
archiving facilities and then making best use of these is then addressed by Procter
who describes how the TLRP resource digital repository has come to act both as a
 Introduction 237

‘shared history’ of research activities and as a means of engaging research users

with project outputs. He describes how the TLRP has addressed the need to
provide a sufficiently rich descriptive framework to allow researchers to locate and
contextualise their research, while at the same time exposing information about
research outputs for retrieval and reuse by human ‘users’ and search engines, so
increasing the reach and impact of research across diverse teaching and learning
environments and user groups.
Maintaining close ties with the TLRP, and sharing key elements of its technological
infrastructure, is the Applied Educational Research Scheme of Scotland (AERS), a
coordinated network of projects in three areas: Learners, Learning and Teaching;
Schools and Social Capital; and School Management and Governance. A Research
Capacity Building Network supports the work of other networks as well as organising
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a more wide-ranging programme of activities. AERS has made use of the same Sakai
Virtual Collaboration Environment as the TLRP, and in their paper Wilson et al.
describe how this environment has been used in order to support communities of
enquiry involving researchers and practitioners in school-based research. Their focus
on building sustainable and self-directing online communities can be contrasted with
the more task-focused and time-constrained work of groups more formally defined as
‘projects’ within the TLRP and AERS. They also describe how such environments
can lead to the establishment of new research relationships and can allow the gener-
ation of new forms of data.
This theme is also addressed by McEvoy and Lundy in their paper in which they
describe how online environments can be used to support pupil consultation
processes in the context of educational reform in Northern Ireland. They argue that,
while provision of appropriate technologies for ‘e-Consultation’ is important (again,
they used the Sakai environment as the basis of their online consultation mecha-
nisms), this is not enough to ensure meaningful engagement on the part of pupils; and
they describe how a framework informed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child can inform the design and operation of an online space. Two further papers
(Tanner & Jones; Cox) are concerned with the role of new technologies as elements
of research and engagement processes. What these have in common is that the
projects they describe use new technologies to stimulate reflection on the part of
learners; Tanner and Jones describe how school students were encouraged to reflect
on their experience of new technologies and Cox describes the research challenges of
studying higher education students learning ‘vicariously’ using online environments
as part of a broader discussion of opportunities for technology-enhanced research.
Cox describes how technologies employed to enhance learning, such as the capture
of learner–system interactions, can be used not only as elements in the personalisation
of the user experiences, but also provide a valuable source of information in a range
of research and development contexts: design experiments, case studies and evalua-
tions. However, he argues that technology-enhanced research should not be
employed for its own sake, but rather that it is best seen as a way of confirming the
pedagogical soundness of technology-enhanced learning systems. A final discussion
piece by Laurillard reviews these developments and locates them in a broader context
 238 P. Carmichael

of technology-enhanced learning, identifying three themes: interdisciplinarity, collab-

oration and pedagogy.

Research capacity building and new technologies

Both the TLRP and AERS have a commitment to research capacity building, the
TLRP through its association with the ESRC Research Capacity Building Network
(www.tlrp.org/rcbn/capacity/), and AERS through its own Research Capacity Building
Network (www.aers.ac.uk); and use of new technologies is one focus of the training,
seminars and support materials that these networks provide. Calls for a commitment
to capacity building within education research (for example, those by McIntyre &
McIntyre, 1999 and Dyson & Desforges, 2002) also point to the increasing importance
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of electronic networking for communication, collaboration and dissemination within

research projects and programmes and between researchers, practitioners and policy-
makers.
The idea of ‘capacity’, however, is complex and contested, and capacity-building
initiatives may be concerned with individual, organisational and sector-wide capacity
(or combinations of these); the term may also refer to a set of processes or the desired
outcome of those processes (see Bebbington & Mitlin, 1996 for a useful review of
approaches to capacity building in the context of development education). This is
reflected in patterns of training related to new technologies, which, despite their
declared aims of building capacity more generally (across institutions or whole
sectors), are characteristically centred around the development of individual skills or
competences.
There is also no necessary connection between levels of individual competence in
using domain-specific software applications (for quantitative or qualitative data anal-
ysis, text-mining or discourse analysis, for example) and a more general collective
capacity (or willingness) to use new technologies to support project planning,
communication or collaborative practices. This became clear in the early stages of the
JISC-funded Virtual Research Environment project reported by Laterza et al. in this
issue. Interviews and discussions with participants revealed that many had extensive
experience and high levels of skill in those software packages which supported their
preferred research approaches. Their expertise was highly specific and focused and
provided no clear indication of how likely, or in what way, they were subsequently to
engage with the more generic online collaboration tools of the virtual collaboration
environment. In fact, after an initial exploration phase in which participants talked
about ‘playing’ with the various tools in the online environment, there was often a
pause and a discussion initiated by an online posting stating: ‘We need to decide how
people will use this’ or asking: ‘How are we going to use this?’ These discussions were
concerned not only with the details of how online tools might be used, but also with
the extent to which individual and collective capacity would need to be ‘built’ in order
for the group as a whole to benefit from using the new technologies on offer. The iden-
tification of individual and group needs and the development of capacity-building
strategies may, then, be best embedded in broader reflective and discursive processes
 Introduction 239

taking place alongside, and interwoven with, the development of methodological and
technological innovations.

Some principles for the technological support of research and development:

the experience of the ‘Learning how to Learn’ project
An important precursor and ‘testbed’ for the development of approaches subse-
quently used across the TLRP and AERS was the TLRP project ‘Learning how to
Learn: in Classrooms, Schools and Networks’ (www.learntolearn.ac.uk). This was
a large project involving nearly 20 researchers distributed across five universities and
40 schools in five UK Local Authorities and a ‘Virtual Education Action Zone’ (see
James et al., 2006 for a more complete account of this project). This project’s
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complex design meant that a substantial level of online support was required: to
maintain communication across the project; to maintain an oversight of project
progress in multiple research sites; and to allow for the management of collaborative
analysis and writing. As the project came to an end, the emphasis changed in that the
priority was to support sustainable patterns of access and engagement of research
‘users’ with project resources and research tools; as such the project web site was reor-
ganised so to orient it towards low-maintenance support and ease of access, as well as
supporting secondary analysis of project data both by members of the project team
and by new researchers (see Heaton, 2004, pp. 36–52 for a review of different models
of secondary analysis and patterns of researcher involvement in these).
What allowed these multiple functions to be addressed, and ultimately contributed
to the sustainability of the project web site, was adherence to a set of broad principles
which are applicable to many software development projects and particularly those in
which patterns of interaction with multiple audiences are required. These were:
componentisation (maintaining content in small units which could be aggregated in
different ways); separation of content and formatting (allowing the presentation of that
content in different formats); reuse of content (rather than allowing multiple versions
of content to exist in different locations); and conformance with international standards
for metadata, output format and to allow universal access (Carmichael et al., 2005).
These approaches allowed continuous and focused dialogue between developers,
researchers and research participants: for example, discussions and ‘storyboarding’ of
how the project web site might develop were concerned with questions of how
components might be combined, structured and presented, leading to rapid develop-
ment of prototypes and new interfaces.
These are also clearly important factors in the design, and for that matter the
success, of many ‘social software’ applications such as MySpace (www.myspace.com),
Facebook (www.facebook.com) and in image, music and video sharing environments
such as YouTube (www.youtube.com), where small components (video clips, images,
events, journal entries, comments and personal information) are aggregated, rear-
ranged and reused across multiple contexts. Similar approaches are also described in
Procter’s account of the development and the effective ‘repurposing’ of the TLRP
digital repository, and such commitments obviously underpin the development of
 240 P. Carmichael

modular environments such as Sakai, used as the basis of the TLRP and AERS Virtual
Research Environments. Their importance is also in evidence in Cox’s discussion of
technology-enhanced research systems in which careful (and well-coordinated) design
of software applications and research approaches can allow ‘born-digital’ data to fulfil
multiple roles and purposes. As multi-purpose learning platforms (integrating teach-
ing and learning, administration, research, service provision and personal resources
such as e-Portfolios) become increasingly common, it seems likely that these
approaches will become increasingly important if effective development of interoper-
able and sustainable systems is to be achieved.

Technology and education: the importance of co-configuration

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The idea of the ‘Community of Practice’ (Wenger, 1998; Wenger et al., 2002) has
been widely applied in the context of both online and offline communities and has
proved to be a valuable point of departure for discussion of teacher and learner roles
and identities, and the nature, role and transfer of knowledge and practice. The
notion of the Community of Practice now informs the conceptualisation, develop-
ment and implementation of a wide range of projects and initiatives concerned with
professional development and technology-enhanced learning; but at the same time,
the label itself has become over-extended and is sometimes used in cases where the
actual ‘community’ or ‘practice’ is difficult to determine.
Several of the projects described in these papers describe patterns of research,
development and implementation involving multiple communities. While these have
features in common with Wenger’s model of Communities of Practice, they are typi-
cally concerned with processes of innovation and knowledge creation, rather than the
replication of established practice or the induction of peripheral participants into
existing communities. This aligns them with the ‘third metaphor’ for learning (learn-
ing as knowledge creation) described by Hakkarainen et al. (2004)—the first two
being the ‘acquisition’ and ‘participation’ metaphors identified by Sfard (1998).
While Wenger’s work serves as a point of departure for these accounts, other
approaches and frameworks are also incorporated: communities of enquiry (Wilson
et al.); social network analysis (Procter); Ciborra’s social-technical accounts of inno-
vation (Laterza et al.); and broader social and political frameworks such as the human
rights perspective used by McEvoy and Lundy.
The interdisciplinary character of the research and development activities
described here (involving, as a minimum, educational and technological elements)
also means that they involve the establishment of relationships between groups and
individuals with differing theoretical perspectives and ways of working and commu-
nicating. Each of these groups (whether they are teachers working in schools, educa-
tional researchers based in higher education institutions, software developers or
others) has its own discursive practices, which help to define their collective identities
and circumscribe practices and identities. It is certainly the case that participatory
approaches are now becoming widespread in software design (see for example
Gottesdiener, 2002), but the processes which have led to the development of the
 Introduction 241

infrastructure described in papers in this issue (and which Cox identifies in his paper
on technology-enhanced research) involve not only participatory requirements-
gathering techniques but more broadly scoped and longer-term collaboration. In the
remainder of this introduction, I should like to reflect on some of the issues and chal-
lenges that have arisen within the TLRP as it has developed its electronic infrastruc-
ture, and to identify the key brokerage roles which may be necessary to enable not
only interdisciplinary discourse, but also the effective development and implementa-
tion of new technologies across educational settings.
In an important article on interdisciplinary working and knowledge transfer,
Ludvigsen et al. (2003) use Cultural-Historical Activity Theory to describe the work-
ing practices of software engineers in their dealing with customers, characterising this
relationship as one of ‘connected activity systems’ and sales activities as moving
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between these activity systems (a full description of Cultural-Historical Activity

Systems is beyond the scope of this article, but for a good introduction see
Engeström, 1999 or Daniels et al., 2006). Ludvigsen et al. describe how, in these situ-
ations, the interface between the activity systems is concerned with the process of
determining customer needs and suggesting the best match for these needs; discursive
practices (and particularly theorised ones) are largely conducted within the distinct
activity systems. This is similar to a situation in which a group of education research-
ers (or any other users of technology) might go about selecting an online platform to
support some aspect of their work; while they might engage in developing specifica-
tions and requirements which are then presented to software developers or service
providers, the main activity in the intersection of the activity system is likely to be one
of ‘matching’ available resources and systems to these expressed needs, as shown in
Figure 1.
Despite the different world-views and working practices of the two groups
Figure 1. Simple ‘user requirements’ model of multiple activity systems involving software developers and education researchers (after Ludvigsen et al., 2003, p. 303)

involved, relationships of this kind are often predicated on relatively simple commu-
nication processes and assume that, while user requirements may be complex, they
can be expressed using some kind of universal language which will completely
describe the functions of the software that they require—allowing it to be selected or
developed as appropriate. The discursive practices which take place within the activ-
ity systems are also significant as they often focus on the identification of exemplary

Figure 1. Simple ‘user requirements’ model of multiple activity systems involving software devel-
opers and education researchers (after Ludvigsen et al., 2003, p. 303)
 242 P. Carmichael

or ‘ideal’ types—of users and requirements (in the eyes of technologists) and technol-
ogies (in the eyes of the potential users).
This has echoes of Becker’s (1970) notion of the ‘ideal client’ which has subse-
quently been reworked in educational contexts by, among others, Gillborn (1990)
and Youdell (2006) in their discussions of ‘ideal’ learners. Although the context is
different, what this perspective suggests in the context of technological development
is that there are discursively constituted notions of the ‘ideal user’ of technology
(and, for that matter, discursively constituted notions, on the part of users, of the
‘ideal technology’). The discourses which contribute to these are centred around the
generation of exemplars rather than the development of rich and potentially problem-
atic examples, with the possibility that these exemplars then become normative and
are seen as benchmarks against which personal or group competences or practices
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may be measured. This was a key issue raised by some of the research users of
virtual collaboration environments provided by the TLRP, who were concerned that
the technology did not come either to constrain or define research practices and
relationships.
Ludvigsen et al. (2003), extending the work of Engeström et al. (1995) and Victor
and Boynton (1998), describe another model of interaction between activity
systems—that of ‘co-configuration’. Victor and Boynton characterise co-configura-
tion as ‘involv[ing] building and sustaining integrated systems [as part of] an ongoing
relationship between each customer–product pair and the company. …a living, grow-
ing network develops between customer, product, and company’ (1998, p. 195). In
co-configuration activities, discursive practices are opened up to a wider range of
participants and take place in new and in some cases ad-hoc contexts situated
‘between different activity systems’ (Ludvigsen et al., 2003, p. 304). These broader
discursive activities typically require mediation and brokerage, and may themselves
be regarded as separate activity systems with their own internal processes and
tensions; and they may be concerned as much with problem formulation as with
problem solution. Developing Ludvigsen et al.’s representation of such a multiple
activity system further we arrive at Figure 2.
Figure 2. Co-configuration involving brokered discourse between two activity systems (after Ludvigsen et al., 2003, p. 305)

Figure 2. Co-configuration involving brokered discourse between two activity systems (after
Ludvigsen et al., 2003, p. 305)
 Introduction 243

The development and implementation of the Sakai Virtual Collaboration

Environment within the TLRP and other programmes (see Laterza et al., Wilson
et al. and McEvoy & Lundy in this issue) has involved this kind of co-configuration
work with ongoing relationships being brokered by researchers with sufficient
knowledge of both the world of education research and that of software develop-
ment to be able to mediate between them. In situations like this, brokerage roles
extend beyond simply acting as a conduit between systems; rather, they involve
identifying opportunities for collaboration and useful interchange (what Burt 2000,
2005, describes as ‘structural holes’ in networked organisations); and also (as in
Wenger’s, 1998, view of brokers) the building of shared meanings that have rele-
vance within multiple systems and the communities within which they are embed-
ded. In other words, the role of the broker is both to intervene in the already
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established discursive practices of multiple communities and to try and relocate

these to a more neutral ‘between-systems’ space. This involves not simply collecting
and reporting the needs, concerns and views of each community, but also legitimis-
ing concerns and problematising issues which may hitherto have been seen as insig-
nificant or unproblematic (see Carmichael & Youdell, forthcoming in 2007, for an
example of this related to the ethical issues thrown up by the establishment of an
online research community).
The vignettes presented across the papers in this issue demonstrate a wide range of
research practice: including different research designs; patterns of engagement with
participants; involvement of teachers and students as co-researchers; analytical strat-
egies and patterns of technology use. Not only do these illustrate the difficulty of
attempting to identify any kind of ‘ideal’ models of research in education, they also
provide an indication of the complexity of the task facing any prospective brokers of
co-configuration activities. Studies of brokers have highlighted the difficulties faced
by ‘boundary-crossers’ (see for example Zabusky & Barley, 1997; Lingard et al.,
2003) and this suggests that as technology and practice develop alongside each other,
it will be necessary that new roles emerge in problematic interdisciplinary and
‘between-system’ spaces. Burt suggests such a role for high-level brokers who main-
tain strategic oversights across developing fields and suggests that such individuals
may require a new set of skills and knowledge; he describes how effective brokers may
be able to identify opportunities for collaboration, interchange and ‘synthesis’ and to
identify those avenues with the greatest potential for development (2005, pp. 22–23).
Similarly, Wenger et al., in recent work (2005), propose a role specifically related to
brokering of the adoption of new technologies, describing ‘technology stewards’ as
‘people with enough experience of the workings of a community to understand its
technology needs, and enough experience with technology to take leadership in
addressing those needs’.
While the projects described in this issue do not pretend to provide a complete
picture of what these emerging roles might involve, they do offer some insights
into the problems they might face and some of the support they might offer to
participants in both the technological and educational spheres. The existence
within the TLRP (and specifically within the team responsible for the development
 244 P. Carmichael

and implementation of the Virtual Research Environment) of individuals with

‘two-world’ experience in both education research and software development was
cited by project participants as contributing to their initial uptake and successful
and sustained VRE use.
It is important to recognise that the notion of co-configuration has relevance
beyond technological development processes. Many of the projects involved in the
TLRP and AERS (including those represented in articles in this issue) were engaged
in a further set of co-configuration activities with participants and practitioners (char-
acteristically involving participatory research into some aspect of professional prac-
tice, but in other cases concerned with evaluation of services, processes and
technologies). The pupil consultation activity described by McEvoy and Lundy, for
example, is concerned with exploring with learners the nature, scope and potential
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impact of a set of emerging practices as part of an ongoing process involving teachers,

learners and policy-makers. As such the discourse may, of course, come to influence
the relationships within the separate activity systems; lead to the creation of new
systems; and present opportunities for boundary crossing by ideas and practices.
It may also, of course, initiate the redefinition of individual and group roles and iden-
tities: for example, as practitioners come to redefine themselves as researchers, or as
researchers become increasingly involved in roles involving brokerage or technologi-
cal development.
If we then consider a further dimension of potential co-configuration activity in
which practitioners (research participants and ‘users’) might engage with technolo-
gists (in this issue, probably best illustrated by the ‘social software’ aspects of repur-
posing the contents of the TLRP digital archive described by Procter), this leads us
to an extended model shown in Figure 3.
We can use this meta-level framework to locate the various projects and
Figure 3. A ‘triangular’ co-configuration model, involving ‘problem spaces’ between three interrelated activity systems

approaches described in this issue: Laterza et al. are concerned primarily with
understanding research processes in the context of a technology development
project (systems of type 1 and 2); Wilson et al., McEvoy and Lundy, and Tanner
and Jones, with new patterns of technology-focused and technology-enhanced
interaction and collaboration between researchers and groups of research partici-
pants and co-researchers (systems of type 2 and 3). Procter talks about researchers
and participants (2 and 3), but with the interesting prospect of research outputs
becoming a ‘public good’ in which technologists and research users might engage
directly to develop new interfaces and social software applications (1 and 3). Cox’s
paper points up the importance of close interdisciplinary dialogue between tech-
nologists and researchers in order to understand better the activities of those who
are both users of technologies and participants in research. In summary, the arti-
cles in this issue of Technology, Pedagogy and Education are perhaps best seen as
explorations of some of these intriguing problem spaces between educational prac-
tice, educational research and technological development. They highlight emergent
roles and relationships, and new opportunities; both for expansive models of
participatory research and for novel patterns of interdisciplinary discourse and
development.
 Introduction 245
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Figure 3. A ‘triangular’ co-configuration model, involving ‘problem spaces’ between three inter-
related activity systems

Acknowledgements

As editor of this special issue of Technology, Pedagogy and Education, I would like to
acknowledge the support of the authors and referees of the articles; the Directors’ Team
of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, particularly Professor Andrew
Pollard and Professor Mary James; John Norman, the Director of the Centre for
Applied Research in Educational Technologies; and other members of staff at CARET.
Others who have acted as ‘critical friends’ and provided valued advice during
the longer-term processes of technological development (as well as participating
in specific projects) include Prof. Robert McCormick at the Open University;
Dr Deborah Youdell at the Institute of Education in London; Dr Naomi Irvine at
CARET; Phil Sheffield, Manager of the BEI at the University of Leeds; Louise Corti
at the Economic and Social Data Service, Essex University; and Sanna Rimpila̋inen
at the University of Strathclyde.
More broadly, many of the projects reported here have involved the sustained
engagement in both research and development activities of education researchers,
research administrators and research participants across TLRP, AERS and other
projects. Their involvement and willingness to give time and thought to explorations
 246 P. Carmichael

of their commitments, working practices and the role that technologies play (or might
play) in these has contributed greatly to the development of improved understanding
and—we sincerely hope—to improved provision of services and tools that support
improved processes and outcomes in educational research and practice.

Patrick Carmichael, Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies,

University of Cambridge, 1st Floor, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge CB2 1SB, UK. Email:
patrick@caret.cam.ac.uk

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