The Camtree team within DEFI at Hughes Hall have been working hard to build the pedagogic and technical foundations to get our mission off the ground, that will enable us to:

• Curate, promote and publish high-quality, ‘close to practice’ practitioner research amongst a growing international community of Camtree practitioner-researchers;
• Provide training and support for research-led improvement and leadership in schools, higher education and other formal/informal settings;
• Systematically review the Camtree database and
  publish research findings and reports;
• Host bespoke Camtree domain services to school systems and governments worldwide.

Beginning to make this a reality involves working closely with a number of groups who are already engaged with and promoting practitioner research in their contexts, to enable us to expand out and create globally-accessible community, learning and library spaces and interfaces that are meaningful for the practitioners they are intended to support.

One group that have been working with us so far are the Sandnes Kommune, near Stavanger, Norway. So when they asked if they could visit us at Hughes we jumped at the chance! On 11th May we combined time to talk and to listen, to review existing practices and discuss ideas for what could be possible. As the group already have links with Oracy Cambridge, we were thrilled that Neil Mercer could also join us for some of the visit.

Whilst on their two-day trip to the UK the school leaders also visited two Suffolk schools who are taking a similar approach and focus – using research lesson study to explore embedding oracy in their curriculum – with opportunities to observe practices and make connections. As Camtree is all about making connections – between communities of practitioners and lessons learned from practitioner inquiry – such visits and exchanges are something we are keen to support in the future, and we’re delighted that the Suffolk schools are looking to arrange a return visit to Norway!