Dear Corina, Philippa and All,

I am very interested by the paper (attached) that Corina has provided as stimulus for this week's e-seminar.  As I understand it, the data set of teacher research questions came from two sources - those submitted for the National Teacher Research Panel Conference and those presented to the Teacher Learning Academy for recognition at 1 of 4 Stages. (Details of these are at http://www.teacherlearningacademy.org.uk ) Since TLA Stages require an ongoing element of coaching and mentoring as a core dimension, perhaps co-coaching as an emergent element of CPD is not surprising? Alos, I may be wrong, wouldn't the majority of the research by teachers be undertaken in conjunction with a university-based research coach or mentor?  That being so, isn't the influence of any university-based coach-mentor also likely to be a very strong element in any choice of question as well as how teacher research is undertaken? I am thinking about teachers' enquiries are 'framed' by their university partners - see http://www.actionresearch.net

One of the most skilful aspects of a research coach-mentor's work with a teacher is enabling him or her to ask a research question that a) aligns with their needs as a researcher working in a school 2) relates to the kind of research that s/he can do and would like to undertake and 3) reflects the sensitive exploration by the coach-mentor (sometimes over several sessions) of the exact focus of research that is likely to be successful for that individual teacher (or group of teachers) to undertake. Surely, one aspect of developing a professional knowledge base is assisting in the CPD of school coach-mentors who can assist teacher colleagues to undertake the research that is probably going to be useful to a particular teacher and his/her school colleagues too?

Warm regards,

Sarah





Sarah Fletcher

Consultant Research Mentor

http://www.TeacherResearch.net
Convenor for BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG
Details at http://www.bera.ac.uk

--- On Sun, 6/21/09, Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Sarah Fletcher <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Third e-seminar for the BERA Mentoring & Coaching SIG: 22 - 26 June
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sunday, June 21, 2009, 9:19 AM

Dear Colleagues,

I am delighted to announce our next e-seminar for our BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG, which starts tomorrow, 22 June. This week on the JISCmail Mentoring-Coaching  list, we welcome Corina Seal, who is a member of the National Teacher Research Panel and an Advanced Skills Teacher at Sweyne park School in Essex. Corina's paper is attached and three questions she invites us to focus on are below.

If you would like to join the JISCmail Mentoring-Coaching JISCmail list it's easy...  Please access http://www.JISCmail.ac.uk and search for Mentoring-Coaching. There's an Options list where you select Join List - an automated message lets you know you are a member.
(You can also access the archives of last week's e-seminar convened by John Robinson and Tony Shallcross and those from our inaugural e-seminar convened by Tadashi Asada).

Please join us for this week's e-seminar, which is part of our season running through 2009.

Here are 3 questions, to be considered in conjunction with Corina's paper (attached)


1) How are teachers' research questions and research currently used by teachers in schools and how do other stakeholders, including policy makers, in education research use them?

2) How do we know, as a mentoring and coaching research community, about the kind of  questions and research that teachers tend to find useful to further learning in schools?

3) When we consider teachers' research questions, do they choose to focus on areas that can challenge them or choose research areas that they feel confident enough build on?

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Sarah


Sarah Fletcher

Consultant Research Mentor

http://www.TeacherResearch.net
Convenor for BERA Mentoring and Coaching SIG
Details at http://www.bera.ac.uk