Methods

This paper describes the design of a major development and research project within the Teaching and Learning Research Programme in the United Kingdom. It outlines the project's aims to enhance teaching and learning in schools through innovative practice at classroom and school level and through networking. It describes the assumptions and principles on which the design of the study was based and how the overall plan for research evolved. This account is located within debates about research quality, which are current in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and specifically in discussions of issues surrounding research capacity building. It concludes that this complex intervention study as a variant of the "design experiment " and offers opportunities for deepening research capacity by knowledge creation and dissemination both within and beyond the research team. (Contains 2 figures and 28 references.) (Author/SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document