What Makes Literacy/ABE Instructors Effective in Their Practice?
with Evelyn Battell, Diana Twiss, Betsy Alkenbrack

Rapporteur: Janet Isserlis

This workshop described a research project underway in BC, which is trying to answer the question, "What makes a good instructor?" The project is a collaboration between five instructors and three research friends who are graduate students.

In the first phase of the project, everyone wrote an autobiography, then read it through, looking for themes that represented major influences and concerns. The eight common themes that emerged were:

• personal characteristics
• ideas about teaching
• learning/classroom environment
• community
• power and politics (power or politics)
• students
• adult basic education career path
• life before adult basic education

Each participant pulled out material connected to these themes. The group worked by electronic conference, and each person added their material to a folder for each theme. One person read through all of the material for one theme, and wrote a summary of the findings.