Yesterday I was only at school for an hour in the morning to start the week off in a routine manner, to let the kids see me and to meet with two parents about a fight which raged in grade 6 on Thursday afternoon. At nine o’clock I got in the car and drove to Tel Aviv. The trip was smooth and I only got stuck in a traffic jam at the very end, when I was very close to the Mofet Institute.
From the moment I entered the room I felt comfortable; there was no sense of something threatening. People were very welcoming and it really didn’t matter that I didn’t know anyone or that this was my first time attending these Interest Groups connected to qualitative research.
The first session was about action research and was run by Professor Michal Zellermayer. I have followed Professor Zellermayer’s work since the days of the whole language approach and since I was a leader of professional learning in the “Bezavta” program. I have read some of her work on action research and her presence leading the group was what first attracted me to join. Many of our research interests overlap and I believe we have many other similarities connected to our practice.
After an introductory hour where each participant (14) presented herself and her connection to action research, Professor Zellermayer lectured for an hour on the direction the meetings will take and based this on an example frm one of her studies. I sat in awe of the proceedings. I heard the ideas and the concepts I have been processing in my reading and in my conversations with Graham and Scott, in the same language, even though the session was held in Hebrew. These connections between my study interests and progress “over there” to my professional context “over here” are crucial for me at this point. Each time I come into contact with respected academics who are doing the kinds of work I feel comfotrable with, I am able to see clearly the possibility of moving to work in the Israeli academic field at some stage.
The emphasis in this group will be on the writing of action research and that is a theme that I have yet to study. At the moment I am writing my texts in an intuitive manner and leaning on the feedback from GP & SB. We were directed towards the work of McNiff, which I will indeed return to and engage with in the next month.
Professor Zellermayer made an interesting comment about publication. She suggested taking a section of a study and beginning to write and revise small sections of it for publication in smallish journals. She described the process where you receive feedback and publish and then expand and deepen the work on the theme in the form of another article. This continues until there is a fully cooked, expertly developed article which may be published in one of the top ranked journals. I hadn’t ever thought of returning to one of the pieces I have published but I’m sure that if I did now there would be obvious ways to continue from it and develop the ideas. I have changed so much since the writing of them that it shouldn’t be too hard to find loose ends to attach to.
I have to get ready to go to school now, changing back into my everyday role. The sessions yesterday breathed life into my desire to continue my research, to finish my PhD and to find a way to devote myself to those interests in a more intensive fashion. I am waiting in anticipation for the next meeting.