Staff development (INSET) policies to support the use of IT across the curriculum: the good news

In a context of many other changes in the education service, schools are being presented with the additional challenge of providing appropriate in-service education and training support to existing teachers to enable them to use IT in their own subject disciplines. It is a challenge that is being met with varying levels of success. This paper reports on part of a research study carried out in 29 secondary schools in five local education authorities, spanning England and Wales. The research has been concerned with investigating the processes by which the IT-related INSET needs of staff have been identified; how provisioning strategies have been determined; and how the effectiveness of the INSET given has been evaluated. Although there are significant problems to overcome which have been discussed by many others (e.g. see 1,2), the focus for this paper is the positive findings. It reports on aspects of practice which are regarded by the participants as being the most effective.