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Introduction
Samuel Whitbread Academy has been in a state of transition with regard to improving teachers' professional development over the last few years. The academy is a large comprehensive school in a rural setting. It currently educates 1,800 students with over 120 teachers covering more than 30 different subject areas. The diversity within such an establishment has always created issues with regard to teachers' professional development as the needs of all cannot be easily met. It would be true to say that the various academy-wide initiatives in previous years have only been met with some success; teachers saying that the most effective element of their professional development has been the chance to work together, to plan, discuss and share strategies for improving learning. In recent years professional development had been developed without a great deal of consultation with the staff and tended to be a "one size fits all" approach. At one extreme, teachers would all be given the same information in a lecture-based activity with some time to discuss implications. They then had to apply the new knowledge themselves, generally without further support. The other extreme was a free reign where teachers did as they pleased under the guidance of the head of department (HOD). This often resulted in development days either being filled with administrative tasks or individual planning, rather than spending time together, focused on teaching and learning. As a result, progress in teachers' professional development has not been as effective as it needed to be and teachers were generally negative towards their own development time.
There was a growing belief among the academy leadership team that the most effective way to improve teaching would be for teachers to develop further the culture of sharing and working together and it was critical that we found something which harnessed the power of collaboration which also focused on the classroom and the learning of students. Coupled with this shift in thinking from the leadership, it was felt that a necessary and essential step would be to develop teachers' understanding of research as a critical element of their professional development. It is well known that research takes place when teachers work collaboratively on investigating their own practice, though the idea of introducing "research" into...