Jen; I do so wish we could change that paradigm! I would love to see far more teachers actively engaged in research in their classrooms and in communicating their needs for more formal research to their colleagues in the research community. As a matter of fact, my colleague Nell Duke from Michigan State (who is a first rate researcher) and I have created an online Research and Practice Forum to accomplish that very goal!!
It can be accessed by going to http://www.edresearchandpractice.org/ where anyone can read and respond in a discussion thread to a variety of articles focused on elementary literacy instruction in high poverty and multi-lingual settings. Practitioners can pose questions for consideration by other teacher researchers and/or researchers based at universities. It can really be a wonderful exchange - much like this one - but focused on bringing researchers and practitioners together, acknowledging that both have significant contributions to make in responding to the big questions in our profession. ellin Ellin, you talk about teachers not having time to read research. I think we need to change that paradigm. What if the teachers WERE the researchers? What if we deliberately took an inquiry approach at the school level and worked as teachers to figure out what would work for our schools and our students? There would be tremendous power for positive change generated by that approach. To me, that is what leadership in literacy requires....we must build capacity in the teachers and then let them do the work they are trained to do! We can complain all we want about programs...but what are we doing as a profession to ensure that our teachers have the content knowledge and pedagogical skill to be able to make effective decisions for children? That is a rhetorical question, of course, but one worth consideration by the great minds on this listserv. One thing we all do from participation on this listserv, is build content knowledge regarding the teaching of comprehension. We get newbies here on this list all the time, wanting to get started and needing information about how to go about effective comprehension instruction. We can feel good that we are helping our fellow professionals to improve their teaching when we dialogue on comprehension strategies. Jennifer _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
