At the earlier stage of our research the focus of the interviews was the decision-making process in each school. These voluntary "interviewees" during the course of the discussion were asked if there were whole school guidelines on professional development for heads of department. We later returned to the schools to interview the headteacher/senior managers to triangulate the perceptions of both management tiers and to enable us to develop a typology of decision-making structures. This also enabled us to draw some conclusions about whether the same philosophy permeated through the school management structure. To develop this line of research, i.e. the link between professional development needs and school typology, we revisited the heads of department to explore in more detail how their school's professional development strategies related to their role, whether this was as departmental or whole-school decision maker.