Practitioner-based Inquiry
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Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 606] Re: Practitioner-based inquiry
From: Chenniah Randolph cr0792a at american.edu
Date: Sun Oct 8 10:34:19 EDT 2006
Jackie Taylor wrote:
- Whether you are a teacher or professional development professional, our experiences with participating in practitioner inquiry are as important as our experiences in supporting action research projects as teacher professional development. Drawing on your classroom, program, or professional development experience, please take a moment to reflect on your practice, and brainstorm a list of the things that you wonder about in your classroom, program, or in the professional development arena. Using scratch-paper, jot down at least ten things in an uncensored list, even discuss them with those near you if you wish. Please tell us:
- What are some examples of questions you wrote down?
- What are some of your concerns in addressing some of the problems?
- What are some ideas for action research projects?
I've just attended the ProLiteracy Conference and the need for more effective and on-going professional development was restated in just about every workshop I attended. It's interesting because it is a nation wide need regardless of the students are ESL, ABE, GED or living in a city, farm or whatever. However, who you serve does impact the type of professional development that is needed and too often the training is geared to be a one size fits all resolution when that's rarely the case. Also, many programs exist off of volunteers but they don't have the time, materials or experience to properly train them. Then the few professional development workshops/seminars that are offered either 1) difficult to implentment in already existing lesson plans, or 2) doesn't always directly address the real needs of the teachers or students or 3) offered at times when people can't make the professional development (Again this is what I learned from the ProLiteracy conference and is not limited to DC.)
A great action research project would be if someone could survey the adult education tutors, volunteers, and instructors to see what they are in need of, collaborate with each other in focus groups on adult education best practices, then begin creating materials for professional development, pilot the materials and move forward from there.
Chenniah Randolph
ABE Program Director
M/DALC - Washington, DC
