Conducting Educational Research

WRITING A RESEARCH QUESTION
EXAMPLE 2 (REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF SHARON CLARK)
PROJECT: COLLABORATION
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
As an administrator on our school’s instructional leadership team, looking at
collaboration has become the driving force of our team’s conversations. We have
found that, as a staff, we need to find the time for collaboration. Collaboration is
a difficult goal to achieve because our staff must perform a myriad of diverse
activities in a challenging working environment. Our challenging working
environment is a function of the combination of the logistics of the large building
we work in and our teaching assignments that necessitate working in many
department areas. Finding opportunities for collaboration will require both sound
planning and a commitment from all staff members.
Before proceeding to clarify the definition of collaboration, some background
information about our school will be helpful. Our school is an elementary and
junior high school (grades 5 to 9). We have approximately 300 students, 15 teaching
staff and five teaching assistants. Our front office consists of two administration
assistants, an assistant principal and a principal. Our school offers students four
programs: a Community Learning Skills Program that works with mentally handicapped
students; a Logos program that is an alternative Christian program;
a Strategies program that provides support for students who have learning disabilities;
and a regular academic program that provides students with a strong academic
emphasis. Within these programs we offer students a variety of complimentary
courses. Clearly, our school programs cover a wide spectrum of areas demanding
a diverse assortment of expertise from our staff members.
Four years ago, based on the influence of our Superintendent, each school
developed a team of lead teachers that made up an Instructional Leadership Team.
This group of lead teachers has the responsibility of leading the rest of the staff
through a variety of best practices. The lead teachers on the team are department
heads, rookie teachers, experienced teachers and any keen staff members that want
to enhance the best practices of our staff members. The team is made up of five
teachers. My role on the Instructional Leadership Team is a lead teacher representing
the school administration. An example of a best practice pursued is teaching
strategies that help improve reading comprehension skills of our students in
keeping with our school instructional focus on reading comprehension. Our focus
emerged by interpreting the Provincial Achievement Test Results to target specific
needs of our students.
For the last three years, we have worked very hard at developing these best
practices for teaching reading comprehension skills. Now our staff is at the next
stage of this process that includes looking at student work and reflecting on this
process. Our Instructional Leadership Team recognizes the importance of these two
tasks and that staff collaboration needs to happen in order for this process to be
successful.
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