January 11, 2006

The First Annual National School Reform Faculty Research Forum was held today in Denver, about 50 people gathered to share their research, question assumptions, dig deeper, and encourage each other. I appreciated having the time and space to make connections with other people's experiences and research.

The first talk that I went to was Do they make a difference? A review of research on the impact of Critical Friends Groups presented by Ellen, a doctoral student at Penn State University. This was a great way to start off the day because it gave me a broad overview of the research that has been done about CFG's. Ellen had looked at 16 studies and found 4 impacts of CFG's:
1) CFG's foster a culture of community and collaboration
2) They enhance teacher professionalism
3) potential changes in teacher thinking and practice
4) student learning

Ellen pointed out that the evidence for CFG's having an effect on teacher practice is very weak, and there is just not much out there at all about how or if CFG's affect student learning. That reiterated to me how important the Teacher As Researcher work that we are doing in Houston is. The teacher researchers are collecting evidence about improved teaching and learning. I really hope that we can figure out ways to get that evidence analyzed in a useful way and written up to add to the body of literature about CFG's.

Finally, Ellen also discussed the weaknesses in the studies. Most of the studies are very short. They may study a CFG or a school for only a couple of years. Also, the studies tend to study only new CFG's, and Ellen felt like there was too much teacher self-report. Some of the things that were missing from the existing studies were issues in equity and factors about sustainability.

During the second half of that session, Betty presented Using protocols to support data analysis: What are we trying and what are we learning? Betty is on the faculty at the University of Georgia. What I got from her presentation and the discussion that followed was the idea that we can have a relationship with our data and that data as well as findings should be public and shared.