Impact study of my Work Based Major Project

1. Impact Study
‘An action enquiry into developing
behaviour management skills’
SID: 0816909 CB330007S

2. BA (Hons)
Learning
Map of the impact
Technology &
Research Using the suggested framework provided in the
module resources, to the left is a map of the
evidence of impact my Work Based Major
An action enquiry into Project has had on me as a practitioner,
developing behaviour Graduateness
management skills
categorised into themes. Throughout the degree
course, it has been a journey of many
experiences and not always easy to differentiate
Professional
Personal Development between professional skill and discipline and
Development
personal. Therefor, the map is presented as a
Degree a prerequisite for
GTP Course to further my
continuum of Professional and Personal
career in Education development, where each skill is placed on
Improved work ethic
Greater understanding of
either side of the scale depending on where I feel
behaviour management it is best placed between the two.
skill in the classroom
Research skills for Comments on this patch, when shared with the
continued professional
Ability to take a reflective development on-line community, raised an interesting
account of my own perspective on this section of the patch:
practice
Confidence to undertake
research in the workplace
It looks pretty good to me; I understand what you mean
about not being sure whether some things fall into
personal or professional development, however your
Time management skills
map indicates a definite inclination towards professional
for large projects
practice in most areas, so perhaps you are not as
Communicating in a
unsure as you think!
professional manner
Being a graduate
I agree with the feedback from the community
and it demonstrates another lesson learnt from
Communication skills with this exercise.
colleagues

3. To present a reflective and analytical impact study of the investigation done in the Work Based Major
Project, the first thing logical to look at is to determine whether or not practice has been improved, as
this is the underpinning objective of action inquiry. To augment the map on the previous slide that seeks
to categorise impact from the inquiry into both professional and personal spectrums, I look here to
discuss other questions I find prevalent to an impact study of the Work Based Major Project:
• What has emerged from the Work Based Major Project?
‣ Professional Practice
‣ Personal Development
‣ Wider professional impact on others
• How can impact on these be measured?
These questions were synthesised from a previous students work on the same objective of measuring
the impact of their study, re-aligned with the context of my own study.
These aims of what and how to measure fall in alignment with another model for recognising impact
from research from Duryea, Hochman & Parfitt (2007, p.9) as seen below:

4. What has emerged from the
Work Based Major Project?
The emergent benefits from the
Work Based Major Project are
categorised into themes. These
are looking to identify what
benefits have been made on
professional practice, personal
development and the wider
professional impact on others,
both in and out of my work
context.

5. Professional Practice
To identify and measure how professional practice has been impacted as a result of the action inquiry, I will take into
account a professional mid-year review that coincidentally occurred after the inquiry and dissemination process. As an
extra input into this section, I believe it is worth stating that throughout the degree course, work and study have developed
gradually into a symbiotic existence where one feeds off the other and vice versa. This mounted to a critical incident during
my mid year review where a positive referral was made on my professional review about my use of behaviour
management. It is logical to assume that this was as a result of the action inquiry process in the weeks before the review
took place.

6. Professional Practice
Taking a more holistic approach to seeing where impact has been made of professional practice, as seen in the map of
evidence; research skills for professional development were created within the professional context. What this means is that
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) from my perspective before the inquiry was something that was delivered by
my school with little or no choice or analysis done on the needs of the staff. From this inquiry and through discussions with
colleagues, this research constituted heavily as CPD and the methods and methodologies gained from this could be
repeated under a different objective, other than behaviour management. The CPD opportunity created, could then be
determined by any practitioner and also be very personalised as coming from a self needs analysis, coming from reflection.

7. Professional Practice
Overall reflection on the whole degree course, concluding
with the WBMP itself, sets the scene of what this journey
has yielded. It was three years ago when I was looking to
study a degree to further my career within education and
this has remained the core objective. From the impact map,
it can be seen that ‘Degree prerequisite’ is at the furthest
point on the left ‘Professional Development’ scale. This
was because, not having a degree would not allow me to
progress with my teaching training and never be able to
become a teacher.
Not only has the course provided a plethora of transferable
skills for use in my future teaching career, but I was able to
take opportunity from the personalised nature of the
course and craft my WBMP centrally around a core
teaching practice of Behaviour Management. The teacher
training provider I am hoping to train with in the coming
academic year have commented on the benefits a major
project like this would have on the foundation knowledge
needed to become a fully qualified practicing teacher.

8. Personal Development
Looking inwards for more personal development aspects stemming from the
inquiry, from the map of impact, the key thing for me on the side of the
Professional Development scale is the last piece of becoming a graduate.
The journey for me of attaining a degree has been one of the most intensive
and rewarding of my life. Being a graduate in my mind opens many doors in
my future and removes possible ceilings that I may have encountered.
Looking more specifically at what was gained from a personal perspective
from the Work Based Major Project was the general contextualisation of the
many skills I had learnt throughout the three years of study. Taking an
overview of the skills learnt that are highly transferable are:
• Action Inquiry
• Presentation through alternative media
• Presenting written work to a word count
• Engaging in critical dialogue with peers
• Presentation skills
• Dissemination, its purpose and its execution
• Qualitative data collection and analysis
The use of these skills in context of a major project that equates to a
dissertation acts as a portfolio of evidence of application of these skills in
addition of simply understanding their possible uses.

9. Personal Development
Going into a more specifics of the personal development gained from the
WBMP itself, it is seen on the impact map that ‘Improved work ethic’ and
‘Communication with colleagues’ are highlighted as amongst the most
personally developmental. These are because of the confidence gained from
both.
In consultation with colleagues, it was commented that it was “no small
achievement to have carried out undergraduate research within the
workplace” and to have produced 10,000 words from it a “great
achievement”. This was an opportunity to communicate with colleagues on
something I was leading myself, something I had not done before.
The ‘Improved work ethic’ comes once again from the self discipline to
manage a project such as this and set my own deadlines and stick to them.
Not having anyone ‘chasing you’ for the work and with great opportunity to
let yourself fall behind, a disciplined approach was certainly needed to
complete the project to meet the Learning Outcomes, the suggested length of
the report and to be able to submit the document by the required deadline.

10. Wider professional
impact on others
Through dissemination events to selected audiences and observers throughout the inquiry process, feedback from these
people can be summarised as:
• Colleagues learnt how qualitative data can be used to inform conclusions as many of them were not familiar with
this data type.
• Colleagues were made aware of action inquiry as a research methodology and its use in the context of education.
• Colleagues saw the developmental approach used to improve behaviour management skills and strategies in
alignment with what worked and what didn’t with a practitioners teaching style.
I cannot say the outcomes from the inquiry were particularly useful to others, because the inquiry was practitioner centric
and knowing what behaviour management techniques and skills work best for myself are only really relevant to me.
Emerging from this assertion is that future planning for research in the workplace could widen the scope to include the
potential for outcomes more applicable to work colleagues.

11. Conclusions
To bring conclusion to the impact from the inquiry, links are Another capture from the WBMP to evaluate and
made to the project evaluation in the Work Based Major conclude is seen below where a brief summary was
Project portfolio. This seeks to find resolution to what was captured by drawing on a tablet computer. Although this
gained from the research and incorporates some impact does not extract detail, I feel it sums up the research and
study. At the bottom of this slide is a wordle.net word cloud reduces it to its bare bones with the underlying
for the evaluation highlighting some recurring phrases. conclusion of:
It can be seen that key words extracted from the evaluation “Significant development of behaviour management skills”
highlight themes from the evaluation, stemming from the
most prominent of ‘research’.

12. Feedback
Thank you for spending the time to view
this impact study, and I hope that you
enjoyed the format used for its delivery
inspired by Reynolds (2009, p.94-117). If you
could offer critical feedback, please consider
these points when making your response:
• Do you feel that the claims made in
this presentation are valid?
• Is there sufficient evidence
provided to support any claims
made?
• Is there any other measure of
impact you would liked to have
have seen highlighted?