Mark Hadfield is a former director of research at CeDARE. In January 2013 he moved to Cardiff University. Mark is linked with CeDARE as an honorary research associate.
If you would like to contact Mark about his research his email address is HadfieldM@cardiff.ac.uk.
Mark's background was originally in researching professional development within primary schools and this often involved supporting action researchers. Over the last ten years he has become more and more interested in leadership and has written and researched extensively in this area, particularly with reference to leading school networks and leadership in the early years. His work on the use of video in research has attracted a lot of attention in recent years (scroll down for more details).
Mark has undertaken editorial consultation on manuscripts for the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement and is Assistant Editor for the Journal 'School Leadership and Management'. He is also on the editorial board of 'Educational Action Research Journal' and is a member of the ESRC peer review College. As an advisor, Mark has worked with the Welsh Assembly Government on the School Effectiveness Framework, North Somerset County Council Education Department and Leicester City Education Department. He was also co-convenor of Network 5 Youth at risk and urban education of the European Educational Research Association.
Longitudinal Study of Early Years Professional Status: an exploration of progress, leadership and impact.
CWDC, 2009-12
Teaching That Matters
Million+, 2012
Evaluation of the Primary Leading Teachers Programme
DfES, 2011
"One of my greatest concerns about educational research is that it is made available in formats that make it useable by practitioners, leaders and policy makers. I have always been interested in creating research-based materials and artefacts that can be of practical use."
"Early on in my career I founded the Urban Programmes Research Group with Dr Kaye Haw and we produced a wide range of materials for schools and community organisations. One of the products we were most pleased with was the Anti-Racist manual for schools (.zip file, 4.56MB). The most popular of the artefacts I created was a booklet for the National College for School Leadership on Building Capacity in Schools (.zip file, 2.75MB). I also edited the NEXUS magazine (PDF, 4.53MB, opens in new window) for the Network Learning Organisation to support teachers and school leaders think about issues to do with networking and collaboration."
"My recent research has focussed on the role of practitioner enquiry within collaborative school improvement efforts, including the role of young people and pupils, an interest that has arisen out of my secondment to the National College for School Leadership where I led the research team of their largest development and research programme, the Network Learning Communities programme. I'm also looking at developing my teaching of research methods by exploring the issues practitioners face when they try and disseminate the findings from their small scale enquires of action research ‘back at the ranch’. Additionally, I have a long term commitment to social justice and have produced a range of professional development materials for schools."
Hadfield M & Jopling M (2012) 'How might better network theories support school leadership research?' School Leadership & Management Vol 32 (2).
Royle K & Hadfield M (2012) From ‘Posh Pen & Pad’ to Participatory Pedagogies: One Story of a Netbook Implementation Project with 108 Pupils in Two Primary Schools. International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 4(1), 1-17, January-March 2012.
Hadfield M & Jopling M (2011) School networks, networked learning, and 'network theory', in Day, C. (ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Teacher and School Development. London: Routledge.
Hadfield M & Chapman C (2010) Realising the potential of school-based networks. Educational Research, Vol 52 (3).
Hadfield M & Chapman C (2009) Leading School-Based Networks, Routledge, ISBN 9780415464659.
Throughout his career, Mark has been very committed to working in research that is participatory and collaborative, which has led him to become interested in how to use video technology. One of his first major outputs in this area was his ESRC-funded project into video within participatory research with young people. Some of the outputs from this can be viewed at the project website.
His many research projects involving video have been collated into the book 'Video in Social Science Research: Functions and Forms', which concentrates on how researchers can benefit from the use of video in their own research. Many of the projects featured in the book were undertaken by the Urban Programmes Research Group (UPRG). You can view materials from these projects at the UPRG website.
Mark has disseminated his work in this area in journals, books and at education conferences around the globe. The paper 'Participatory Video Research: Emerging Methodological and Ethical Issues', which was delivered at ECER in Berlin and AERA in New Orleans, reports the findings of a project concerned with exploring the key methodological and ethical issues researchers and practitioners faced when working with video and young people. You can download the PowerPoint presentation from this paper.
'Video as a Visual Method within Practitioner Research' is a chapter in 'Practitioner Research: Teachers' Investigations in Classroom Teaching' by Myint Swe Khine and Issa M Saleh. The article 'Voice, young people and action research' was featured in Educational Action Research volume 9 (3). It moves from an overview of what is meant by the term 'voice' to discussing the significance of its links with action research using a simple typology of three types of voice: Authoritative, Critical and Therapeutic.
