Are we there yet? teachers, schools and electronic networks.

The ‘Learning How to Learn’ project of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme engaged teachers from primary and secondary schools in the UK in development and research of practice related to ‘assessment for learning’ between 2001 and 2005. As part of the project, we were concerned to discover what factors encouraged the development and sharing of practice within and between schools, including the use of electronic networking. A range of data about the use of electronic networks, tools and resources was collected through: a survey of over 250 teachers; an audit of participating schools' IT infrastructures and available resources; semi-structured interviews; and a novel ‘network mapping’ task. We discovered that while use of IT is now a well-established element of classroom practice, teachers made less use of electronic networks to develop their professional practice, even when their schools were part of networks designed to support them in so doing. Despite a range of barriers to the development of IT in teachers' practice, the overall impression presented by the data is one of optimism as to what new technologies can offer and a sense that while the journey may be onerous the benefits will make it all worth while. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]