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Marina had been the provincially funded Research Friend in BC since 1999,
had recent experience with a collaborative research-in-practice project (2003),
and was approached by the funders to help get another project started. Bonnie
was interested in research in practice, had worked with Evelyn and her
Malaspina colleagues in gathering the data for her MA thesis, and wanted to
be part of something new and exciting.
The research group had its first teleconference in October 2001. During this
conversation the group generated ideas about what the practitioner researchers
wanted to research, how the group would go about doing it, the process
of obtaining funds to do the research and what the final product
could/would look like. From the start, there was a lot of talk about leaving a
legacy. With so many ABE/Literacy instructors due to retire and retiring, the
practitioner researchers wanted to leave a legacy about their time in the field,
and their knowledge and skills, for incoming practitioners. This would involve
defining what they do, explaining how they came to be doing it, and
possibly explaining their beliefs.
Marina suggested we could blend all the things we wanted to explore into a research question:
One of the things we might do as a group is explore what you
know about what works and what doesn't work. Explain how this
is more than "good practice." In doing this you can also tell the
story of how you came to this field and how the field developed.
You could look at what good practice means to you. What are the factors that
make a "good" "effective" literacy instructor? (Teleconference minutes, October12, 2002).
Proposal to the BC Adult Literacy Cost-Shared Program (ALCSP)
Following the teleconference, Audrey Thomas, then with the Ministry of Advanced
Education (AVED), funded the research team for an introductory
meeting a month later in November 2001. The funding covered accommodation,
travel and meals for a research team of seven, as well as Marina's time to work with us,
but did not include substitute costs for the five instructors. At this three-day meeting the research group talked about the idea of doing
practitioner research, shared ideas, and learned new ways we could go about
doing research. We also explored what we were interested in learning more
about and what we wanted to share with the rest of the ABE/Literacy world.
By lunchtime on the first day, the team had narrowed down the research
question, and by the end of the second day, we wrote the first of several
drafts of the research proposal to the ALCSP. The initial research focus was
around the nature of effectiveness in ABE/Literacy instructors. Two questions
about methods were added in later drafts. After discussion, Evelyn
summarized her thoughts:
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