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Manifestations of research- leaders??tacit knowledge are
engagement in schools invariably relevant as a
source of valuable data
There are at least five ways in which research- alongside other forms
engaged schools can source research information of research information
and evidence to underpin improvements in generated from within and
practice. They are: outside the school. Likewise,
data generated from within
i. Academic research ??codified, theory-driven, the school might be
formalised, and found in magazines, journals, compared with academic
and books; also presented at conferences research data from other
case schools sampled or
ii. Tacit knowledge ??the accumulated and surveyed.
aggregated knowledge of teachers and leaders
gained from practical experience in situ

iii. School records and similar data that the
school currently possesses, such as student
performance data, parent and staff
information

iv. School-generated projects on particular
topics, such as action research projects
undertaken by specific staff

v. Collaborative (i.e.. school-school, school-
university) school-wide, school-deep
co-ordinated intervention projects intended to
be sustainable and scalable.

The first three sources of data already exist, and
thus the main challenge for teacher-researchers is
to access them, and to interpret their significance in
the specific context of the school. The fourth and
fifth sources require schools to adopt a pro-active
stance to generate new data in situ, the main
difference between them being one of scale, in the
case of the fifth, research on a larger scale would
involve the whole school and external
collaborators, such as universities.

In reality, more than one, and even several, of the
sources of information/data listed above should be
used simultaneously. For example, teachers??and

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