Tag Archives: articles

No professional learning! Have a holiday!

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On the home page of the Israeli Teachers’ Union web site there is a warning, issued before the Hannukah school holiday:

More or less says:

Do not, under any circumstances, agree to any professional learning in the school holidays…

Certainly a sad sign of the times. Maybe I’m breaking the rules then as I sit here and attempt to write an action research article about my work.

עובדי הוראה
יקרים,

השתלמויות בזמן חופשות
הרינו מורים לכם בזאת, שלא להשתתף ולא להיענות לשום דרישה של גורם כלשהוא
במשרד החינוך או ברשות המקומית, המזמינים אתכם להשתלמויות או לישיבות בזמן החופשה.

החופשה היא זכות המוקנית לכם בתוקף הסכם קיבוצי וזכותכם ליהנות
ממנה.

 הסתדרות המורים תמשיך לשמור על תנאי העבודה והזכויות
שלכם

לשירותיכם בכל עת.
חג חנוכה שמח  וחופש נעים

יוסי וסרמן

http://www.itu.org.il

המזכיר הכללי

Image: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images

An honor and a real push!

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Thank you so much to Professor Michal Zellermayer and the members of the Action Research and Self Study Interest group at the Mofet Institute!

Yesterday I had the honor to present my article for Journal X to the members of the group. Most of the participants are experienced teacher educators and researchers and all have a real interest in the sort of research I am doing. The atmosphere in the group is very supportive, and even though I was the first to present this year, I did not feel threatened or pressured at any stage.

As I approached the front of the room I asked myself a number of questions:

How will my work be accepted?

How does my research fit in under the category of Action / Participatory research?

How will I react to the criticism I will… may hear?

Was this text appropriate for this framework?

and last but not least…

Did I make a mistake volunteering to be the first?

I will begin by answering the last question – No! I certainly did not make a mistake, Presenting my article and receiving thoughtful and intelligent feedback from this group was  an incredible honor and supplied me with a lot of material to think about and work on. The changes which were suggested in the structure of the article are similar to those that my supervisors would have suggested (I suppose).

Professor Zellermayer directed the group to look closer at the article using the characteristics of Action Research papers based on the work of McNiff and Whitehead and the analysis proved very useful. The main criticism which arose is that I haven’t spelled out the “What is my concern?” which is motivating my study in general and this article in general. This is one of the differences between a paper which fits in as a chapter in my PhD to  a journal article which must stand on its own. This of course is something to consider in every article I attempt to create.

According to Professor Zellermayer and the members of the group, The article should begin with the answer to  “What is my concern?” . Again and again I find myself being pulled back to opening my writing with more traditional academic styles and material on the context of the study, where really what I should be doing is plunging my reader into the study with the kind of professional texts which are at the heart of my work. The same thing happened when I wrote my paper for my confirmation process.

I have to take off my doctoral student cap now and replace it with my teacher cap. I hope to continue this reflection on the wonderful feedback I received yesterday as it had motivational value as well as a real push in a positive direction. I received many comments pointing to the strong points in my writing and  also concrete comments in the direction of improvement.

Have a nice day!

 

 

Thinking about writing… again…

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This morning I got up early to reread the article I submitted to journal X about a month ago.

As I read I jotted a few points in the margins and identified a few issues I should work on. What surprised me though, was the intensity of the feeling that the text is far more complex than anything that I am capable of producing. My immediate reaction was to “tweet”:

“I just reread an article I wrote and submitted a month ago. Yet again I had the: “Did I really write that? I can’t do that again” feeling”.

I reread the article as I suggested that it be discussed by the Action Research and Self Study interest group I joined at the Mofet Institute. I desire feedback which will help me revise the article when it returns from the peer reviewers. I am interested in understanding more about how my work fits into the Israeli context of Action research. I am eager to be able to name the type of writing I am doing and to further pursue how it will eventually blend into my PhD thesis.

As it is I am stuck. I have not begun a new piece of writing since I submitted the article and submitted an abstract for the The Fifth Israeli Conference of  Qualitative Research.

Both of those events are essentialy unfinished and that  is somehow preventing me from producing something new. I suppose this is something other academics and writers experience.

This is always a complicated time of the year for me as a student. In Israeli terms I am mid year and running full steam (or trying to!) and the university, my supervisors and all are in Christmas mode, summer leave mode. I am trying hard to motivate myself to start writing a brand new section, something that will enliven me and push me further in the process.

Cartoon – Toondoo: http://www.toondoo.com/

 

Research as a political act

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In my confirmation report (2011) I wrote:

While negotiating the nature and content of my professional learning courses, I have recently come to understand that this study cannot
remain apolitical, if it ever aspired to do so. Teacher education is involved in politics and as I have discovered through my readings (e.g. Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Kincheloe, 2003; McWilliam, 2004; Price-Dennis, 2010) teacher practitioner research is in essence a political practice, even if its participants didn’t intend it that way at the outset. Teachers who critically explore their professional environment and their practice, teachers who reach out to their peers and share experience in search of collaborative learning,
are making a statement about who they are as professionals and how they wish to be seen by others.

This morning I read an article  in preparation for the lecture by Professor Bar Shalom that I will hear tomorrow at Mofet. The authors, Bar Shalom and Krumer-Nevo, claim that all research is political in nature. This is indeed interesting, as it is a far broader way of relating to the political goals and influences of research. The authors explain:

“Research is a political act since it not only reflects existing reality, but also influences and creates reality, whether by supporting, affirming, and reinforcing existing reality, or by criticizing it and advocating change. The researcher’s position regarding reality influences their choice of subject and the questions they raise, as well as the selection of research procedures to be applied. The words the researcher chooses in order to describe their findings and conclusions structure the object/subject addressed by their research and the balance of power between these (Ife, 1997)” (p. 237).

It seems that if this is the case, then a distinction must be made between those researchers who acknowledge this political side to their work and those who do not. Researchers setting out to achieve social change are usually more open and explicit about the way they are hoping that their work will influence the lives of their participants and their communities. In my study I write explicitly about my intention to sound the voices of classroom teachers whose knowledge is often overlooked in the educational research arena. The political nature of my own study is a theme I need to explore more thoroughly in the coming year. .

Bar Shalom, Y., & Krumer Navo, M. (2007). The usage of qualitative methods as means to empower disadvantaged groups: The example of the Kedma School in Jerusalem. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 2(1), 237-244.

 

Feedback!

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thinking

Yesterday afternoon I presented a narrative I wrote over the recent holidays to the group of doctoral students I joined. First I must say that because of the meeting I was forced to sit down and write and the result was a 2500 word narrative about the teacher stories written by the teachers participating in my courses. I chose to write the narrative in a similar style to those I wrote for my MEd thesis and my article in English in Australia.

One of the things that interested me was the fact that I chose to write this narrative in Hebrew and not in English. I have been pondering over the reasons for this and have come up with three:

  1. I wanted to receive significant feedback from the group and thought it would be easier to achieve this if the text was in the members’ mother tongue
  2. The context of the narrative and the teacher-texts contained in it are Hebrew based
  3. I am thinking about my work more in Hebrew.

In my thesis examiners’ report, BD suggested I look into the bilingual aspect of my work more closely. He suggested I do far more than simply translating sections directly from one language to the other. I’m still not sure what this means…

I was surprised to receive compliments on the writing of the narrative, all three members commented on the readability and interest in the text. When I sent them the file, I was aware that I was feeling OK about sharing my writing and that I am definitely more confident about my writing skills than I was two years ago.

Most of our meeting was around the difficult “So what?” questions and the “What is this text?” “Do you consider this a research text?” “How does this fit in?” questions. I still find it very difficult to answer these questions and it was very important for me to sit and try and answer them intelligently and clearly. Many points arose and I have a lot of thinking to do to try to make things clearer.

I will write more about this soon, maybe then I will have some orderly thoughts (see image…). 

 

RF image: http://www.images.com/

Thesis is in! Flowers for my readers!

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 http://www.fromyouflowers.com/images/products/new_large/TFWEB165.jpg

I can’t believe that my thesis has been handed in and that this enormous task is behind me.

It has been over a month since I blogged because I was just reading, writing and revising 20 or so hours a day. I was exhausted but more than that, I was riding an emotional roller-coaster. The closer I got to finishing, the more excited and nervous I became. On the one hand I was waiting to submit the piece and be done with it and on the other, I was upset that I was leaving this incredible learning experience behind. Tears of joy, achievement, pride, frustration and worry all joined, I found it hard to describe my feelings.

Now I have many questions to explore. After a year off school and my job as leader of professional development, I am going back to work full time. How will I manage to keep up my professional learning in formal and informal frameworks? Will I continue this blog which was essentially a study tool or will I begin a new work blog? I imagine that this will all become clear to me in the next few weeks.

This blog has taken on a role very different from that intended at the outset. I thought I was opening this site as a means of recording my study notes but it has become far more than that. Blogging has helped me develop my identity as a teacher and as a researcher, it has helped me think and reflect. My writing here has brought me into a community of edubloggers, wonderful people who, as I wrote in my thesis “have let me into their hearts and into their classrooms”.

I want to thank you for reading my work. I never imagined that anyone would find this blog and would take the time to read it. You have all made a great contribution to my study and to my thesis on professional learning for teachers. I appreciate you giving me your precious time, the flowers at the top are for you! 

 

 The next step is preparing my thesis for journal publication, another step in this wonderful endless journey of professional learning.

But… today I am on lifeguard duty at the pool… an exhausting experience of a totally different kind.

 

 Image from: http://www.fromyouflowers.com/images/products/new_large/TFWEB165.jpg