To improve educational attainment the UK government policy is to make teaching an all-masters level profession. The University of Plymouth, with its local government authority and school partners is piloting the Plymouth Express, a progressive, integrated professional development model that enables the university (HEI) sector to play a full and active role in developing excellent teaching and learning through providing scholarship, research and ‘capacity’ [human, material] building to meet the professional development needs of all teachers from initial training to senior management. In the pilot model, HEI and local authority (LA) staff and HEI students are attached to and work in a single secondary school and its partner primaries. Experienced school mentors and coaches contribute to the university-based elements of professional development courses. A pattern of cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al, 1989) and reflective practice (Schön, 1983) thus facilitates professional knowledge transfer and assimilation from experts to trainees. Experts in the school context are teachers, other professionals and helpers/supporters. Experts in the wider context of professional development are drawn from the community that has the necessary expertise to offer [HEIs, LAs, Agencies, etc.], and, more crucially, the knowledge, understanding, skills and protocols/procedures effectively to transfer that knowledge to the ‘novice.’ Knowledge transfer has to be grounded in an understanding of the syntactic nature of pedagogic and academic knowledge and an insight into the psychological dimension: i.e. how on both a personal and social level the ‘novice’ and the ‘expert’ can interact so that there is a meaningful transfer of knowledge from expert to novice. Theories of situated cognition (Collins and Duguid, 1989), legitimate peripheral participation, (Lave and Wenger, 1991), cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al 1989), knowledge bases for teaching (Shulman, 1987) and the typology of professional development (Harland and Kinder, 1997) reinforce each other: knowledge is socially created and involves the assimilation, adaptation and creation of sophisticated pedagogic protocols. The concept of education as professional knowledge is fundamental: knowledge that is of equal validity and status to academic knowledge. Such knowledge is situated, (Greeno, 1999) and provides a framework for the active involvement of HEIs and LAs in professional development that is school based and needs driven. This project aims to pilot the model and collect data to provide evidence for its effectiveness in terms of impact on professional development for an all-masters teaching profession, early professional development of teachers and on other staff, HEI students and pupils.

A pilot evaluation of the Plymouth Express model of teacher professional development will be based in a secondary specialist science school and its partner primaries, and will constitute a small scale instrumental case-study (Geertz 1973) to provide evidence for the degree to which ‘real’ science within a developmental pedagogic context is valued and understood. University Science and Education academics will work with teachers in schools to provide science investigations for students. The following data will be collected; • Semi-structured interviews: headteachers, teachers, technicians, student-teachers in schools and with university academics (science and education) • non-participant lesson observation • student questionnaires The interviews will be audiotaped and transcribed, the analytical instrument being based on categories defined a priori by the research questions and partly by the responses. Transcript codes will be continuously compared with lesson observation field notes and questionnaire responses, providing a systematic triangulation of data sets.

This paper will report on the pilot outcomes, which will inform the professional practice and operation of the Plymouth Express model, vis a vis its impact upon: • Teachers: professional development as coaches, mentors and tutors for staff and HEI students. • Teachers: development of both academic subject and pedagogic subject knowledge. • School culture: development of practitioner-researchers having active involvement in developing an evidence-based approach to teaching and learning and curriculum innovation and development • HEI students: how their intensive, long-term involvement as groups working closely alongside staff in a coaching-mentoring role affects the quality of their professional development and their professional performance. • School students: the extent to which the involvement of HEI and LA staff and HEI students have affected the learning of school students and their orientation towards learning.