Educational Change Fund

The Educational Change Fund Project for 2001-2002 followed the same pattern as previous years. Participants had the equivalent of five days release time, opportunities to obtain resources, attend and present at conferences, interact with experts in the field and engage in discussions with colleagues.

Teachers were released from their classrooms to provide them with the time and the energy to focus on what they were learning about their own practice. The value in taking teachers from the isolation of the classroom to group participation is always the quality of the discussion that ensues and the satisfaction that is obtained from the exchange of ideas. This year was no exception. However, this year's group had a mix of novice and experienced action researchers. This was a mixed blessing. It provided us with a few problems in presentation but greatly enhanced the round table discussions as those with experience were able to share tips and reassure those who were struggling with their first attempts at framing questions and sustaining journal writing. We also had a bigger complement of support staff to work directly with the teachers. As we are less able to provide teams of teachers working together in schools the participation of support staff partnered with those teachers becomes increasingly valuable.

The experienced group however also encountered problems. Teachers, who chose to tackle an extension or "spin-off" from their original question, were not as easily satisfied with their work. They went through a significant struggle becoming much more self- critical. Most ended with the same euphoria of accomplishment as they had initially experienced but the route there was harder. The novice action researchers struggled with framing the question and sustaining journal writing. They alternated between frustration and elation that co-exists in any good research project and ended up enormously proud of what they had accomplished. The experienced researchers came to the project with the confidence of having done it before, but, seemed to struggle more in the midst of the project because they were working on a higher level and were becoming more sophisticated in their thinking and methodology.

All of the participants that completed the project had the satisfaction of knowing that students were achieving better results and that their classrooms were a little closer to their ideal. They took pride in what they had accomplished. Most importantly they had confidence in their ability to articulate that accomplishment and validate their research. For classroom teachers what could be better than that?