Two Northwest School Division teachers and learning coaches, Susan Plant and Jennifer Dorval, have earned a Dr. Stirling McDowell research grant totalling just under $11,000 to fund a research project to be launched in the fall.
One of only five grants awarded this year province-wide, the money will enable them to conduct a study on how best to support novice teachers as they develop their skills in the classroom and experienced teachers as they refine those skills.
"The research will focus on how to most effectively support teachers in their professional development and growth in our role as learning coaches," said Jennifer Dorval.
A learning coach is an experienced and capable master teacher who visits and helps teachers at the start of their careers to become effective practitioners. The Northwest School Division will be employing four learning coaches next year who will be making regular visits to teachers throughout the divison.
"We'll be writing a paper that will be published and made available to all teachers through the McDowell Foundation," Plant said. "The thing that is important to us is that we are inviting the teachers into the process of doing action-based research. It effectively makes us all researchers. A large chunk of the money that we receive will be used to fund teacher release time for collaboration and planning for those teachers who will be participating in the project.
"Teachers endeavouring to improve their classroom practices," she continued, "will be given different models to follow (depending upon the individual needs), and in a collaborative process the teacher and the learning coach will examine the success of the model to see how effective it is in enabling them to improve their role, and whether or not it can be modified or changed to become more effective.
"One of the nice side effects of the project is also that it helps us to become better in our jobs as teacher coaches. It will guide what we're doing."
"Really," said Dorval, "we want to be the best that we can be in our role."
Applying for the grant involved writing a nine-page application and a five-page proposal that details the methods they'll use, the relevance and benefits for teaching and learning that will occur, how they will deal with privacy issues and how they intend to share the results.
Currently the plan is to work with six teachers in Meadow Lake and Glaslyn from September to January, assess the results and complete the report by May of 2013.
One of the other interesting aspects of the process also includes the use of an innovative piece of software, THOUGHTstream, which allows users to contribute, share and ?prioritize their ideas by combining the accessibility of email with the structure and documentation of a professionally facilitated process.
"We've used the program this year to get and give data to people," Dorval said. "And we'll be assessing THOUGHTstream as a tool while we proceed with the project."
When asked about the number of hours they thought would be required to complete the project (90 per cent of which will occur outside of the working day) both Dorval and Plant smiled.
"The hours involved?" Plant repeated, "Really we don't want to know, but it's probably a lot more than we anticipate."
"And a good thing we work well together," Dorval added.
The McDowell Foundation is an independent charitable organization established in 1991. It was created to meet the need expressed by many teachers for better, teacher-oriented research into education.
Teachers were convinced they needed to become more actively involved in the generation of educational knowledge and ensure that research into teaching and learning is practical and relevant to the work of the classroom teacher. Over 220 research projects involving hundreds of teachers from across the province have now received funding from the Foundation.
