Our main finding was that case notes on their own are not a solution to the dilemmas in our work. Better headings and templates help us to articulate more about what happens in the coaching sessions. They also help us keep track of what we’ve learned and what we need to do.

No matter how the notes are written or how they are stored online, the team needs to meet regularly to discuss what we’ve been doing and to learn from each other’s experiences. More vibrant and detailed case notes help to document what has happened, what we learned, what we might try next time, what questions we have and what needs more reflection (what we are calling the imponderables). Strong case notes reveal what we know. But the best way of sharing that information is through conversations with colleagues.

We worked hard to find a method of tagging and indexing our records to make them accessible to other coaches working in similar contexts. However, there are so many variables that impact a collaboration it was challenging to find a set of tags that were helpful. We will continue to work on this and, as we build the data set, we hope that ways of classifying contexts will emerge. For now we make sure each team meeting includes time where we can ask other coaches for advice and input. We are still sharing our case notes in a private Google Drive but we need to meet regularly as a team to talk about what we are observing and learning, and to support each other.

We asked ourselves what part of our work on case notes would be useful to LBS workers in other programs. We felt that what we had done was so specific to our context that it could not easily be adapted to other contexts.

LBS practitioners do a lot of reporting. The AlphaPlus team hears them say that some of the reporting is not relevant to the work of teaching. As a result many programs keep two sets of data: one that is required for reporting to funders and another that helps practitioners reflect on and improve their practice. We felt that we had not learned anything that would help LBS practitioners streamline their data collection process or make it less time-consuming.

There are two outcomes of the project that will make a positive contribution to the field: case studies and reflective practice. You can read about these ideas on the next pages.