This paper reports upon one strand of a National Research Development Fellowship Project for teachers in the Learning and Skills Centre in England. The project was jointly funded by the Learning and Skills Service (LSIS) and the Institute for Learning and was designed and conducted by the Centre for Excellence at the University of Sunderland (SUNCETT). One of the key aims of the project was to explore how involvement of front-line professionals in educational policy development might improve the implementation and evaluation of policy initiatives in education.

This strand of the of the project began by collaboratively identifying 'hard' and 'soft' measures which could be used to capture the process and provide evidence of the impact of the overall project. In addition each practitioner-researcher awarded a £6.000 bursary and research support was asked to identify and provide 'hard' and 'soft' measures of the impact, the process of impact and evidence to support the impact of their individual project.  The project also sought to explore how new professional relationships between policy, research and practitioner communities might be established to inform policy processes in educational contexts. Throughout the project representatives from LSIS and IfL worked in close collaboration to identify and share critical incidents and experiences which might inform the research.

The theoretical framework underpinning the design of the study used Dewey's practical epistemology coupled with Fielding's notion of 'joint practice development' to practically explore  more holistic assessments of efficiency in the evaluation of public service policy in general and in education in particular. 

Through this theoretical framework the project policy makers and researchers worked alongside each other to create democratic spaces and opportunities where each could learn from the other in an iterative meaning- making process. In this way, the project team hoped to present an alternative approach to the evaluation of educational policy capable of moving beyond crude narrow measures of 'outcomes' which currently dominate the landscape of educational evaluation.

This research study recognised and attempted to address shortcomings in approaches to educational evaluation which not only restrict and reduce educational evaluation to the measurement what is capable of being (overly) simplified and 'objectively' (easily) measured but also overlook subtle, complex and crucially important aspects of the day to day realities of the policy implementation which can be used iteratively at each stage to improve the policy process.

Biesta, G, J. J. & Burbules, N.C. (2003) Pragmatism and Educational Research. Lanham USA: Rowman & Littlefied. Biesta, G. (2009a) Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose of education. Springer. Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education, New York: Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1933, Revised Edn.). How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Reflective Process Boston: Heath. Fielding, M. et.al (2005) Factors Influencing the Translfer of Good Practice: Nottingham Department of Education and Skills