Supporting Inquiry Work: What do we know? what do we do?
with Janet Isserlis

Rapporteur: Tannis Atkinson

State literacy resource centres (SLRCs) came into existence in 1991, when US federal legislation funded and developed adult literacy resource centres. In 1994, a resource centre was set up in Rhode Island. The state director of adult education heard about action research and worked with the SLRC to support those projects. Janet's predecessor, along with a reading specialist who worked with educational research, helped support the projects; in 1998 the state expanded the time allotted to projects from two or three months to the entire academic year.

Janet is now the resource person for Rhode Island. Each year, she works with a group of practitioners who want to explore research in practice. The number of practitioners who participate each year has varied from seven to 18. Practitioners have clearly stated that their involvement relies on support in the form of money and time to do this work.

Janet described the process she uses. The group meets at an initial retreat in October. Each month, they have an assignment. By January, each practitioner has designed a project and begins to collect data. The practitioners meet monthly. Group members share the results of their research online in June.

The following is an outline of the process Janet leads people through:

• The first step is to form a question. Janet asks, "What's your itch?" She encourages people to make the ordinary extraordinary. She recommended an interview with Stephen Brookfield at www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9601/v5n2.pdf.
• Janet feels her role is to help people think about what they're doing. She works with them to explore critical analysis. She encourages them to articulate their assumptions. The process of critical analysis means to continually surface, examine and challenge one's assumptions. 
• Janet also encourages people to use the following inquiry process:

                              Plan          Act          Observe          Reflect

• To help people prepare to collect data she encourages people to consider a number of data gathering processes, including sociometry, especially work by Jean McNiff. 

After data is gathered, Janet encourages people to do categorization exercies (seeing the information in different ways), and to separate fact and opinion. Each year, the participants' reports are available online.

Janet also outlined some of the ongoing issues for this work: 

• Money is always an issue. The budget for this work in Rhode Island includes funding for Janet's position, $700 per participating literacy worker, and some money for a retreat. 
• Very few of the 200 state-funded literacy teachers work full-time. This makes it difficult for people to connect, or to stay in literacy work. Janet is considering a different model of support, such as study circles, so that she can work with more people.