What’s Your Action Research Project? #SOLC18

The room is filling up. Teachers are filing in and taking their seats at assigned tables in the function room at Brandeis University. It’s Sunday afternoon at 2:00 PM in March. Only teachers would be dedicated enough to give up three hours on a Sunday afternoon for professional development! It helps a bit — just a bit — that it’s a cold, grey afternoon. The weather isn’t tempting us to make other plans.

This year’s speaker at the 10th Annual Mandel Center Teacher Forum was Marilyn Cochran-Smith from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. Her topic was “Your Classroom as a Laboratory: Teacher Research at School and Beyond.” I have attended the forum for the last five years or so, and this year’s focus held great appeal to me. While I am highly curious, reflective, and open to new ideas and methods, I have never actually conducted formal research. I find the idea of defining a problem of practice and diving deep into the who/what/where/when/why/how of it sounds fascinating!

Dr. Cochran-Smith’s talk was not only informative, but engaging. After clarifying what teacher research is and isn’t, and explaining the difference between a teaching challenge and a true problem of practice, we worked with our table groups (all complete strangers!) and shared our question proposals for feedback. My area of interest, and I’m definitely still refining it, is why Kindergarten teachers (of which I am one) are often reluctant (but I am not) to use beginning texts with “pre readers?” I believe even our youngest learners, still mastering letters, sounds, and basic phonemic awareness skills, greatly benefit from the experience of exploring a well-written and well-illustrated Level A text in a small group or 1:1 setting, in addition to continued letter/sound knowledge development. I believe the two go hand in hand.

What do you think? Do you have an action research project that you are actively working on? I’d love to hear about it and your experience as a teacher researcher.

************************************************************************************

This post is part of the annual month-long Slice of Life writing challenge organized by Two Writing Teachers. Join us! It’s my second year of Slicing in the challenge.  (If you want to take a peek at the Padlet of writing ideas I’ve created, I’m happy to share. Click here! It grows every day.)