Editorial

“Cada maestrillo tiene su librillo”

Kurt Clausen and Cheryl Black

This old Spanish proverb can be translated as “each teacher must follow his own book of instructions.” It could also be the theme of the four articles in this edition: Each researcher comes from a different background, and each asks a different question. However, while the authors represent the diversity of levels found in our education system (a teacher, a vice-principal, a program coordinator and a university professor), they are held together by the type of research they perform and their reasons for engaging in their studies. Inevitably, each comes to a solution that is right for his or her own situation.

As a classroom language teacher in the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, Jennifer Straub engages in perhaps the most personal of the four studies. She worked with one student participant on a technological project to see if it improved her second language skills. Bridging past theories with this one case study, Straub used the method as a way to guide further development of her own teaching strategies and wider application.

Margaret Juneja’s project “Improving children’s knowledge of math facts and problem solving skills” expands the base of participants to include a number of her students. While the roots of her research can be seen emerging from a more endemic problem, the question she wanted to solve was quite individual. It came from her simple desire to help her students do better on the EQAO math skills test - a very practical problem that demanded pragmatic, straightforward solutions. For her, it was not a dramatic change in mindset, but more of a change of technique to create noticeable results. In this setting, these changes worked – but, it is significant that she at no time advises the reader to do the same. Rather, she suggests that teachers look to their own practices.

While James Ellsworth’s article, “the parameters of mentorship”, deals with a larger, board-wide project it is, in essence, a foil for a very personal issue with which he is grappling – his concerns over the term “critical friend” and the exact role of a project mentor. In the end, his conclusions are more authentic responses to himself than any generalized recommendations.

The final article by Dr. Sharon Murray concerns Electronic Journal Partnerships and involves the most participants (30 university level students) of these four studies. However, yet again, at the centre of this study is not a drive to create theory but to understand a situation. Dr. Murray asks the questions of herself and her own class to find some solution that works for her, and as such personalizes the answers.

What holds all these pieces of research together is, in actuality, their uniqueness. It is their search for self-meaning and individual direction that brings them to the heart of Action Research. Whereas larger, more objective, quantitative research may enable the researcher to sit back and describe a general trend or phenomenon (that a certain population chose particular responses in a survey, for example), Action Research gets more to the “why and how” questions. In all these projects, researchers employed their own idiosyncratic style, tailored to their own situation. The drive for each was not to arrive at some generalizable theory but to satisfy an itch to understand why something was happening in a certain setting. It also gave them cues as to where they could proceed – because they had built these steppingstones themselves, they could now continue with more confidence in the nex t leap. Each must follow their own instructions. However, it is our privilege to be the outsiders with the window on their small workroom, and gain insight.