Janet Collins is a Lecturer in the School of Education at The Open University and Chair of the MA course, E842: Developing Practice in Primary Education. A former primary school teacher she worked for nine years in inner city schools in Sheffield. She was awarded a PhD at Sheffield University and moved to The Open University in 1994. Her major research interests and publications are in the area of primary education and school-focused inservice.

Kim Insley has been a primary teacher, researcher and a lecturer in higher education. She qualified as a teacher in 1979 from the Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, Notre Dame College, but immediately moved to London where she has since worked. She gave up full-time teaching children in 1987 and began part-time lecturing in mathematics and music at the Polytechnic of the South Bank (which later became South Bank University). She became a full-time researcher and completed her M.Phil researching music education in Inner City Schools. She has worked in a part-time capacity on PGCE courses at Goldsmiths College, The Open University and London University Institute of Education, (where she is currently a member of the open learning PGCE team), and as a free-lance primary education consultant. Much of her work is now taken up with The Open University′s MA programme both as a tutor and on the primary modules and s a consultant to the new primary module course team.

Janet Soler is a lecturer on the School of Education at The Open University. She trained as a primary teacher in New Zealand where she taught in primary and secondary schools. In 1990 she moved to an academic position at the Department of Education at University of Otago, New Zealand, where she had the responsibility for developing a curriculum studies programme. During this time se also contributed to the development of a teacher, undergraduate, primary pre-service programme. Her recent research publications include international journal papers on contemporary and historical investigations of literacy policy and practice. She has also published papers on the use of action research and reflective practice for the development of ICT and internet-based technologies in her own courses.

CONTRIBUTORS ARE ALL AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY