Introduction - from tacit to explicit knowledge

I have been designing, developing and researching educational materials, contexts and practices based on computer technologies since 1978, and as a practitioner in this field, sought to design these more effectively. In that time I have focused on learner-centred analyses and researched widely across multiple disciplines to improve education. This section describes this practice, setting the individual portfolio items, labelled as [C1] to [C21], in the context of my story and linking them to my theoretical development of the four analyses [A1] to [A4].

Teaching

I have progressed from an individual enthusiastic and creative teacher [C1] taking part in developing practice [C2] to a researcher/teacher- educator [C3] and leader of innovation in education [C7], taking a full part in a developing research community.

My early work concentrated on improving the design of individual pieces of software for addressing challenging learning in the school curriculum. [C3, C5]

Curiosity about learning

An interest in user-interface design and mental models [C4] led to an approach to analysing individual learning based on cybernetic principles [A1] and an account of how technology enhances such learning [A2]. My work on new multimodal learning based on multimedia technology [C6], together with an appreciation of cultural and linguistic factors [C10], led to a simplified and more holistic model of the learning process itself [A1] to inform my design practice.

Creativity in learning

In this period my increasing awareness of the wider context of education informed a holistic and systemic approach to large-scale action research addressing the development of new systems of education [C7, C9, C11, C12, C14, C18, C20]. Alongside this work, I focussed in on creativity and reflection in learning through a sequence of projects aimed at enhancing creativity and reflection at a range of levels in education [C13, C15, C16, C17, C19].

Leadership

My increasingly responsible rôles as a teacher, software developer, media designer, team leader and director led to a broad and deep knowledge of the factors which lead to effective design methods and criteria for improving design quality in iterative design cycles. My identification of these factors and criteria is structured on a creative and constructivist model of learning [A1], a learner-centred holistic model of the decision points in education [A3] and a perspective analysis of other stakeholders in education [A4]. I recently created a critical overview of this knowledge of learning theory for non-academic innovators in a report for an EU project [C21], and I have been working for twenty years to develop an historical research archive of developments in educational computing [C8].

This account of the progression in development of my knowledge is followed in the next sections by an account of each decade's practice.

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