CHAPTER THREE: Building a Culture of Inquiry, Reflection and Scholarship

Part A: Mobilizing Systems to Enhance Teachers' Research-Based Professionalism In Improving Student Learning

Chapter Three explains my influence in helping to build a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship within a District School Board. Because of the importance of the connections between the personal and the professional in my thesis I share my life with the people as well as the tasks in my system portfolios. The first part of Chapter Three is focused on my system portfolios of Community Relations, Career Education and Assessment. My analysis is focused on how I mobilize systems to support people through connections, networks and relationships and then I look at the transferability of that knowledge from one situation to another.

The second part of Chapter Three analyses how I have managed to provide sustaining support for inquiry, reflection and scholarship as a systems manager. It focuses in particular on my influence on the development of a culture of inquiry and reflection as I mobilize system supports and then create sustained supports through contributing to building communities and networks. The systematized knowledge that Catherine Snow (2001) is searching for already exists in my board and other boards in Ontario and across the world. I begin with my initiation into action research, the beginning years in Brant, the supports that I built up to provide sustained support for the teachers and principals in my district and as an additional benefit in other districts.

I want to frame this part of the thesis with how I envisage the work of managing systems in a broad perspective. Rather that seeing myself controlled by regulations and legislation which are indeed a fact of life, I see the opportunities for accomplishing a vision of a better world in which students can develop optimally given their capacities. Part of what I do is carry that fervent belief and hope in a very visible, relational and action-oriented way. People see me doing and being that vision. In earlier chapters I talked about policy having the capacity to liberate even though governments frequently interfere, and I've also talked about that fact, there are vast arenas in which there is unlimited room for creative and productive work in a context of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p.116-124). I have no delusions that managing systems is simple to do but there is a simplicity to it.

Great groups need leaders who encourage and enable. Jack Welch once said of his role at General Electric, "Look, I only have three things to do. I have to choose the right people, allocate the right number of dollars, and transmit ideas from one division to another with the speed of light." Those three tasks are familiar to almost everyone involved in creative collaboration (Bennis & Biederman, 1997, p. 26).

It is complex and demanding and requires a committed effort from all of the players to produce the synergy to improve the social order, in my domains (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p.116), focusing on students, school and office staff, families and communities to create a culture that supports student learning.

In Chapters One and Two, I shared two perspectives of my role, Executive Council and Family of Schools. In this section, I am connecting the functions in those aspects of my role with my system portfolios again with the unifying values of valuing the other and building a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship. Just to review, in my family of schools I am the supervisor of the schools through the principal. With system portfolios, I have responsibilities for particular focus areas in the entire school district and as well I influence operations that are not technically in my particular portfolio through input to policy and procedures. My portfolios have changed over the period of my tenure as a superintendent and since there have been many and I share some in other parts of the thesis, 1 I will deal with only a few.

In more stable environments superintendents might have a portfolio like Curriculum, Special Education or Human Resources for an entire career. Commonly, Peter Moffatt 2 gave me roles that required innovation, large-scale change and for which there was frequently no past practice in the board. I often referred to my portfolio as the 'things that need doing but that don't fit anywhere or that no one else wants to do'. I welcome and need that challenge and, in fact, seek it out. While support staff that worked with me had specific job descriptions, frequently they picked up other assignments that came my way. When staff work with me, working with the parents and community and in action research just comes with the role. If they have past experience in those areas, that's a benefit and if they don't, I take time to coach them and find great pleasure at seeing their growth. I have learned as much, and sometimes more, from them as they have from me.

When I speak of my system portfolios, then, I mean those roles in my job description that affect the entire school district, not just my family of schools. Because of their higher profile, they are the ones on which the system judges my performance. That profile comes from the fact that staff and community across the entire district regard me as the resident expert in that arena and that those are the reports that I submit to the board of trustees for policy decisions and thus are the ones reported in the media. The concept of 'expert' is an interesting one. When Peter gave me the Career Education portfolio in 1995, I said that I knew very little about it. His response was that by virtue of my task commitment and attention to the area, I would be the 'expert' in six months. These portfolios 3 have changed as many times as the membership of Executive Council for obvious reasons. The staff assigned to assist me in these responsibilities have changed as well because of term appointments, advancements, changes in job assignments (mine and theirs) and retirements.

In this section, I take you into my processes of growth and learning in order to understand how my vision and directions are created and implemented. I explain as well the connections between my career path and the personal and professional parts of my life. It is important to see the connections like the faces of a hologram. The work I do as a volunteer in the community is connected to and improves my work as a superintendent and derives from the same values I hold about children, families and learning. First some of the history of my system portfolios, career connections and volunteer work.

Community Relations and Parental/Community Involvement

My portfolio of responsibilities has included community relations and parental/community involvement from my first assignment in 1995 and, in fact, evolved from a combination of my interest, a need Peter and I saw in the system and a shift in society for greater involvement and accountability. I'm not sure of the origin of my interest but I think my experience as a mother, my work in special education, my leadership in the Community Teamwork committee for the Brant Board (Delong & Moffatt, 1994) and my involvement in The United Way, a fund-raising organization that supported families through a variety of organizations, provided the basis for the value. I had, and continue to have, a vision of a community that values education and an education system that values community. When Peter and I first talked about my areas of responsibility, we called this portfolio "Education-Work-Community", a bit cumbersome as a title but at least clear as to intent. By 1999, we changed the title to Community Relations which, while shorter, is less specific. In any case the work was a matter of bringing together the groups that had an investment in education inside the conversation so that people affected by decision-making had input into the decisions (Sergiovanni, 1992).

Out of our work together on The Community Teamwork Committee, Peter and I created a framework in which we saw Parental/Community involvement occurring at a variety of levels (Delong & Moffatt, 1996). We felt that we could encourage involvement if people had options that fit their interests, schedules and comfort. The levels included a spectrum of participation from working in school classrooms to going on field trips to providing advice on School Councils and governance as board trustees. We also recognized that we had a great deal of work with both community and staff in changing the system to a culture of involvement. Like Sergiovanni (1992), I see the assets that others can bring to the process of improvement, assets that have long been overlooked or ignored by educators. We are also finding in 2001 that we are using a 'levels of involvement' framework as a means to clarify what 'involvement' means when staff and community members volunteer for committee work. Our hope is that defining the kind of involvement might prevent some of the confusion caused when people think that an advisory committee is a decision-making committee.

Many studies provide evidence that engaging parents and community in schools improves student learning (Coulombe, 1995; Epstein, 1995) but, in particular, involving parents in their child's school work encourages higher achievement (Ross, 1994). As Peter Moffatt said in his system newsletter, 'Keeping In Touch' (1995), "In fact, there is a lot of research to suggest that involvement in "Home"work will have the greatest positive impact on student learning." After three years of focus in the Brant Board, we had evidence of increased parental/community involvement in the six levels that we had designed in the Community Teamwork Committee (Delong & Moffatt, 1994, 1996; Moffatt, 1995-2001) but none that showed a direct co-relation to improved achievement.

During my years as Learning Resource Teacher, Department Head of Special Services and Coordinator in Special Education (1982-89) I learned to respect the role of the parent as essential to support the learning of the children with special needs. The time they spent at school was just not sufficient to bring about the changes necessary to guide them to improved learning. I needed the parents and community service agencies to work with us as partners in the process. I saw my role not only as teacher of skills for the students but also as a builder of bridges, a scrounger of resources and an opener of doors so that the students would have support, opportunity and challenge to reach their potential. It is unlikely that educators can provide for the needs of students independent of the rest of their world.

The United Way was a natural for my volunteer work, especially when the local organization was floundering because of its incapacity to change with changing times. I see volunteering in a community role as part of my commitment to improving the world for children and families. It saddens me to see reports on the decline in the numbers of volunteers in Canada, down 7.5 million in 1997 (Bains, 2001). I worked with the board of directors and the Executive Director to respond to the changing dynamic of the community and to build that capacity to plan for the future. The organization has never looked back and has had successive successful fund-raising campaigns.

Because of my work in The United Way I was invited to become a member of the Brantford General Hospital Board. Some days I wondered at the wisdom of my choice of volunteer work when I would deal with the economic rationalist policies of the government in my day-to-day work and then go to the hospital board and deal with the same pressures. Also, the hospitals were being restructured in the community and one of the local hospitals was closed -- a similar amalgamation experience to the school boards. 4 I think it helped me be more effective as a board member to understand the politics of the decision-making, budget, public and policy pressures and see that the government was attacking sectors other than education but it did not provide any relief for me from them. It appears in 2001 that the provincial government has decided that it has brought the health care system to its knees and is now being kinder and more generous. We can only hope that the same will happen in education.

For the years of this study, 1995-2002 I held this responsibility of building connections and partnerships with the communities. My extroverted nature made me the obvious choice on an executive team that was made up primarily of introverts who did not enjoy the social role. Because I had lived and worked in the Brant area for all but two years of my life, making those connections between the school system and the community met some resistance but at least I knew the geography and the community groups. When I am starting out to build a community partnership, I start with a system need and then make connections with people with similar interests who I feel will be interested in pursuing a partnership. Frequently it is a back and forth motion of testing out potential, seeing a way forward or a blocked route and trying again in a problem-solving process: Who would like to help me with this project that will mutually benefit our groups? One area was career education.

James Ellsworth, teacher, philosopher, scholar and friend; I have known James for 30 years.

Career Education

An area that Peter Moffatt and I identified as needing attention within this community-related portfolio was that of school-to-work connections. While there had been work done in cooperative education, a program which combines in-school and work experience components, it expanded considerably into more varieties of work placements through the work of program consultant, James Ellsworth. A Review of Career Education (Delong & Ellsworth, 1997) gave us information on how to improve programs and where we needed to go next. James brought a close alignment between academic studies and work placement by broadening the types of work experience and strengthening their connections to particular courses.

When amalgamation occurred many of the programs and partnerships needed expanding to the other areas of the new district. In the six years of that portfolio, there has been remarkable progress in the spectrum of programs and the community partnerships that enhance services for students as evidenced in annual reports to the board. (Delong & Ellsworth, 1997; Delong & Morgan, 1999; Delong & Ellsworth, 2000; Moffatt, Director's Annual Reports: 1995-2001). When James chose to return to the classroom, Elaine MacAskill picked up the responsibility at the consultant level. A year later, she left the board for a school administrator position in another board. While I have been able to hire the right people (Bennis & Biederman, 1997), it is an annual process of replacing at least some of them. Then I combined assessment with career education in a coordinator position, a position of greater responsibility than consultant.

This is a photo from (Wideman, Delong, Hallett, & Morgan 2000) of my friend and colleague for over 30 years, Diane Morgan, former Coordinator of Assessment and Accountability, now retired and working as a consultant on contract.

Career Education and Assessment

With amalgamation, Diane Morgan whom I had worked with as teacher, principal and coordinator, was appointed Curriculum Coordinator- Assessment and Career Education after a difficult exercise in politics. With amalgamation, every appointment became a contest as to which former board the person would come from. With the re-structuring of support staff, Diane who had been coordinator in Brant was out of a job but by reorganizing some other staff I was able to retain her advisory/consultative role and to find meaningful work for her last year before retirement.

Diane and I have been colleagues and friends for over thirty-five years from the days that we were both secondary school teachers at Pauline Johnson Collegiate and Vocational School in the late 1960's. Her subject specialty was Geography and mine was English. We both taught students, not subjects. I married and left teaching to raise my children but we remained connected partly because my ex-husband was active in the district teacher federation, the Ontario Secondary Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) work and so was she and the meetings were frequently at our house. When I returned to part-time work, 1979-81, while my daughter was still in pre-school, I often provided temporary replacement for her or someone in her department or school as an occasional teacher. I returned to full time work in 1981 and was again active in federation, as was she. In 1984-86, I was Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation District President, a position she had held two years earlier. From 1986-88, we were in system coordinator positions at the same time, she in curriculum and I in special education, with then curriculum superintendent, Peter Moffatt. Those were intellectually-stimulating years with Peter pushing us as a team of six to develop and implement programs across the Brant County Board of Education. There was a close bond in that group and we were devoted to Peter.

I left that role and went into school administration because of a values conflict with a new superintendent of special education and a desire to get into a line position which is recognized as a more likely route to the superintendency. "The latter (line positions) have historically provided the visibility, socialization, and other opportunities necessary for career advancement to the superintendency" (Brunner, 1999, p. 35). Curriculum positions were out of the line of advancement. In the last 3-5 years that has changed to a degree, partly because people like me demonstrated that lock-step advancement through school-based administrative posts (I never held elementary teacher or vice-principal positions) was not essential. Women especially experience broken career paths in careers and now there is a high demand for school administrators. As principal of an elementary school, I was able to talk with Diane, then Curriculum Coordinator, and get her advice on the needs of the teachers and students and she was regularly involved in my schools. My school improvement plans were always based on advice from her knowledge of curriculum and assessment.

As Coordinator of Assessment and Career Education, Diane was an expert in assessment and loved that part of the role. While she didn't love the Career Education as much, she made every effort to do the necessary work but the advancement in assessment, evaluation and reporting in the new board was remarkable-holistic marking, leveling work and rubrics became common language. She taught me a great deal about curriculum and assessment. I did most of the community connections so she could focus on assessment. I enjoyed this work because I could carry information and relationships across domains to make creative connections and influence the culture of the community (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p.116). Diane and I struggled with our values through the early years of provincial testing and gradually managed to find ways of accepting the mandate and of using the results to help improve learning. (Delong & Morgan, 1998). I can remember our devastation when we received the second set of results and there was little improvement despite all our efforts. What had we done wrong? It was not a happy time. But being reflective practitioners by nature, we kept analyzing the data. We were a very productive team, which is not to say that there weren't disagreements and testy conversations. Again, as with Peter Moffatt, our shared values and commitment to student learning made it possible to find a way through, if not agreement on everything.

There is a close connection in my life between the personal and the professional. Our relationship was not purely professional. When I was experiencing more freedom, as my children grew older, we were involved in more social events such as dinners and theatre. Like me, her job was on the line when amalgamation hit. Our most difficult time was in the transition between Brant and Grand Erie and she failed in her attempt to gain the curriculum coordinator position. As I said, that was finally resolved. During the breakdown of my marriage she was a friend to lean on. When she went through an episode fighting cancer I took a similar role. A workaholic like Peter and I, she and I would combine work and social so that a dinner together was often planning a presentation that we were doing together or writing a board report.

I worried that in her retirement, we would lose contact but that has not been the case partly because I have been able to contract with her to support action research projects during 1999-2001. In 1999-2000, she provided support for An Action Research Approach to Improving Student Learning Using Provincial Test Results (Wideman, Delong, Morgan & Hallett, 2000) project and in 2000-2001, she supported action research projects focused on student-led conferences (Morgan, 2001; Delong & Moffatt, 2001 5 ) and helped with Passion in Professional Practice: Action Research In Grand Erie (Delong, 2001b).

When Diane retired in June 1999, I felt a real loss but was fortunate to hire James Ellsworth (see above) another teacher that I had worked with at Pauline Johnson (PJ). I remember that he came to teach in 1968 at PJ, two years after I did and I called him "the rookie" and tried to be a mentor to him. I remember fondly his 'hippie' sandals and love for teaching. When he transferred to Paris District High School, he taught my children both of whom thought he was a wonderful teacher. In the Brant Board, he had worked with me as Career Education consultant and I knew the quality of his work. He had left that post because he missed the students in the classroom so much. I understood that completely. At the end of his first year in the coordinator role, he went through the same angst but he remained in the coordinator role with a concession that he could devote some of his time to the writing of a new History curriculum. A combination of my standards of valuing the other and building a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship is evidenced here. His intellect demanded some deep work in his passion area and I massaged the role to accommodate that. James is the only support staff member I can remember who kept being drawn back to his love for classroom teaching. For most, it is a demanding role but with much more flexibility and a larger stage and they resist returning to the school with its restrictions, as I experienced in 1990 going from Special Education Coordinator to principal.

As with Diane, James brought his particular strengths and interests: he found the Career Education part of the Coordinator of Assessment and Accountability more comfortable because of his former experience as consultant and while sustaining and enhancing the work of Diane in assessment, he put more attention on career education. After the first year, he grew in confidence in the role, and I left most of the work in Assessment and Career Education to him, meeting regularly Monday morning to keep the various tasks on track. One of my learnings from working with Diane was that I needed regular meeting times to sustain the relationship, to value the other and to keep track of projects with staff. We both are dialectical and dialogical and those meetings were essential to anticipating and solving problems and to reflecting on and refining reports to the board. He became the expert on the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) testing processes which by then included testing of grades 3, 6, 9, and 10, success in the latter being a secondary school diploma requirement. Unlike Peter, Diane and I, James has a better sense of balance. He took up the role of helping me find balance between work and home and I think he has to some degree. His monthly reports on his activities include both his own efforts at finding balance and a reminder to find my own (Ellsworth, 1999-2001).

As I watched him grow in the job, I was reminded of my own learning in understanding politics. At the February 23, 2001 board presentation of the Board EQAO Action Plan for submission to EQAO, he did a very competent job of presenting the plan for improvement succinctly and concisely in language that the trustees could follow. He had a 'professorial' manner that could interfere with communication but we had worked on it and he became increasingly conscious of it. I thought about how much his presentation had improved from the first one in November of 1999. Then one of the trustees asked him if he was going to set a specific target for improvement. In his booming, radio announcer voice, he said, "No!" We had agreed that he would answer any questions pertaining to the content of the report and I would answer the political questions. This one slipped through. I remember doing the same thing in my first report to the new Grand Erie board in November 1998 when asked if I was going to release the school by school grade three results to the public. Because I was new to this portfolio and it had not been past practice in the former Brant Board, I said, "No." Wrong answer. Later in discussion of the reports, in both cases, we did consider targets and did release the school by school results. I have learned, as has James, that an answer like, "I hadn't considered that." and "What would you recommend?" are appropriate responses to trustees. For the action researcher, the opportunities to learn and improve are a constant.

How Do I Mobilize Systems to Work for and Support People?

Uncovering what Jack Whitehead calls the wisdom I hold around knowing systems, my political 'nous', has emerged through a combination of the dialogic and the dialectic focused on my narrating, assessing and explaining my experiences. While I often appear to do things effortlessly, my prowess comes out of years of experiences, both successes and failures and as a result of creative collaborative (Bennis & Biederman, 1997) work with mentors like Peter Moffatt and colleagues like Ron Wideman, Associate Dean at Nipissing University. 6 My continuous push for advancement can partly be attributed to expectations from my childhood of high attainment and a need to feel that I have had a productive life in improving the world. I feel that I can have a greater impact on education in the broader sense as a system leader. Not everyone would agree with that. Because of that belief I have sought out and accepted system roles.

In the narratives above, I began an activity or project with a vision, not a blueprint, of a better way of doing things. I can visualize this in my head in a general way. Then my thoughts go to the people that can make it come to fruition, their connections to the concept and then different configurations on possible pathways to that improvement. I play with the pieces in my mind in different ways almost like turning a jewel in my hand. If I go this route how will it work? What problems will I need to overcome? Are there budget implications? Can money be found from internal budgets or are there resources in the community? This reflection may be quick or it may play out over considerable time. What does happen very shortly is that I try out my idea on people I trust like Peter Moffatt, Cheryl Black or James Ellsworth. They help me see the obstacles which, being the indomitable optimist I am, I am inclined to understate or overlook. Out of that playing with pathways in my mind and in dialogue comes a best alternative and that is where I start.

How Did I Learn about Systems?

I can't be sure but it seems to me that working both in school board organizations, federations and in other systems was a factor in my knowledge of systems. I had been active in local, provincial and national teacher federation activities, holding elected office for many years. I have also held a systems position in the Brant board as Co-ordinator of Special Education Services and as well in volunteer positions as board member and President of the United Way and board member and Chair of the Brantford General Hospital Board-- these too are systems. There is no such thing as a 'system way of doing things' but systems and organizations share some common practices with which I became familiar. They provided a bigger stage and opportunities to make connections across domains (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p.116).

Why did I mention that I was president of the United Way and Chair of the hospital board? Status is not a concept I enjoy but I have to accept that I do want to be recognized for my contributions. Gaining promotions that I aspire to and feel qualified to handle buoys my spirits and makes me feel valued. I think I enjoy success as I define it and that definition does change. I feel that I get as much, even more, enjoyment out of seeing others succeed as I do my own. My ambition, and that is certainly what it is, has come as a result of needing and searching for challenging opportunities to test my capacities and to continue to develop and improve. Even as I write this I am keeping my eyes open to a director's position having kept that consideration on the back burner pending completion of this thesis. Why do I want this? I would welcome the challenge of the most senior position in the school system and being the leader of the administrative team in a very challenging and exciting time in education.

I have talked about not wanting this to be a study focused on gender. However, given that I do want to be an effective superintendent, the chair of the hospital board and perhaps director, I am aware of my active concern that women be seen in senior positions in organizations and on community boards. I am aware as well of the importance of role models for young women, my daughter notwithstanding, so that they are not limited by "mental models" (Senge, 1990) or stereotypes of what is possible. Maria Birkett, Marion Kline, Cheryl Black, and Ruth Mills and many others have talked about the importance of me as a role model for them. I want to have lived a life as an effective superintendent and senior woman manager.

When Susan Noffke (1997) talks about issues of power and privilege, I think she is seeing those issues as negative ones. In my knowledge of systems I have a power to mobilize resources that allow people to do the things they want to do. When people like Cheryl Black or Greg Buckles or Ruth Mills 7 come to me and say, "I want to try this strategy that they hope will help students learn better", I will leave no stone unturned both within the school system and in the community to get them the supports they need. I think that is much like Brunner's "power with/to" philosophy (Brunner, 1999). The only proviso is that I expect to hear in advance how they will find the answers to the question: 'How will this strategy improve student learning?' and afterward to receive a report on the answers they found. 8 So while I devote myself to getting people the supports they require, I do require accountability for those resources as I feel I must be accountable to the board and the public as well as to my own values as standards of practice and judgment. I think that is a power for good, a privilege that I can and do use to improve the social order (McNiff, 1992).

Ruth Mills, principal and leadership program chair, sent me an e-mail (when I was at Bath University in March) about the project that I encouraged that shows that systems' influence:

Dear Jackie

I am writing to tell you how excited I am about our current Action Research projects. Last night we watched the video from the kit. The kit that Ron Wideman and I developed has been a well-used support (Delong & Wideman, 1998a). Everyone loved it and seemed energized by it. The professional talk following the video was wonderful. Here were the voices of the teachers and administrators talking about their learning through action research. Everyone has framed a question and the entire staff are embarking on their projects with zeal. I have noticed a more positive twist to conversations in the staff room: "let's tell Bonnie (Kutsch) about our action research. Maybe she can give us some feedback" " I am so excited about this I have wanted to do something along these lines for a long time with my students." Because I regularly ask for feedback on how I am doing, people like Ruth let me know without prompting. We will talk when you return.

Love ya,

Ruthie

PS Thanks Greg for the money. This is the research fund that I have struggled to get and retain for four years -- 1998-2001 and Greg, her family of schools' superintendent, controls.

Ruth Mills

Principal

Lansdowne-Costain School

March 21.01

How has my postmodernist attitude affected my systems knowing?

Another aspect of my ambition has to do with my penchant for innovation, change and my postmodernist attitude -- I resist structures and rules. Tracking my career and my activities in it, there is a running theme of doing things differently, of challenging the status quo, of resisting traditional or sequential models. I think there must be a co-relation between living that way and encouraging that in others. It is not that I disregard tradition; it is just that I have to question "Why?" and "Is it the best way?" It looks and feels like improvisation, a "recombining partly familiar materials in new ways especially sensitive to context, interaction, and response" (Bateson, 1990) and creativity, " a person should enjoy pushing the envelope of a particular domain" and "promising signs are interest, curiosity, and an almost childlike naivete that questions everything, that is dissatisfied with the answer: 'But that is how things have always been done'" (Csikszentmihalyi, 2001, p.118).

In the years 1983 to 1999, a span of sixteen years, I took a number of innovative or at least 'out of the ordinary' career actions. Because of my break in service to raise my children, from 1973 to 1981 and because of an overabundance of teachers, I held a number of temporary teaching positions as I tried to get myself back onto permanent staff. In 1983, I was surplus to the school system and was offered a job that I was not qualified for and didn't really understand. And yet I accepted the challenge of a position new to secondary schools in the board: Learning Resource Teacher. It was a choice because I was also offered Typing and Geography, positions that I had some experience in and understood. I chose the risk, went to summer school to get the accreditation and embarked on open seas. I loved the job. Once in Special Education I became an advocate and innovator. Because of my political action on the federation negotiating team, I was instrumental in creating the new position of Special Services Department Head. This was important because if you are not part of the decision-making structure in secondary schools, you are not involved in the decisions. In my experience in secondary schools, the decision-making body was Heads' Council. If Special Education was going to have an influence on improving student learning, it had to be part of that structure. I applied for and was appointed department head of Special Services at Paris District High School. When I was elected District President of OSSTF in 1984, I didn't want to give up my headship and the influence of this new headship position so I negotiated a combination job of District President and Department Head, halftime each.

Needing a new challenge in 1986, I applied for and was appointed to Coordinator of Special Education Services for the board, a position that had not been held by secondary staff and not valued by secondary teachers. As the superintendent introduced me to my new department members, "Jackie is a mover and shaker." In 1989 I was appointed to the elementary panel as principal. I had never taught in elementary schools and I had not been a vice-principal, a position I had stubbornly refused to apply for. This had not been allowed before in board. I believe that my break in service from January 1973 until 1981 (with part-time work from 1979 to 1981) provided me with the experience with change that gave me my flexibility and positive attitude to change and innovation.

How do my Connections Support Mobilizing Systems?

If one eschews hierarchies, one is much more dependent on relationship and trust. I recognize as does Stewart (2001, p.70) that trust has limits but it needs supports such as the other's competence, and community and networks. The word coined my Wenger and Lave in 1987 of "communities of practice" resonates with me (Stewart, 2001, p. 71). Connecting activities, understanding organizational systems and making them work to improve learning is my modus operandi. My involvement in the Ontario Educational Research Council (OERC) was a partnership that was of mutual benefit. For three years I had been part of the planning for the Act Reflect Revise Conference (ARR), 1997, 1998, 2000. In the planning for the 1999 conference, I was not involved and I was extremely upset when plans for it fell through. I committed to myself that I wouldn't let that happen again. For three years, I had presented at and/or been a board member of OERC.

In February, 2000, the ARR conference was held in Brantford (one of my purposes is to make programs and services easily accessible to Grand Erie staff). Lindy Zaretsky, special education resource teacher in York Region District School Board and some of her action research group presented at the conference. In conversations at the conference and at OERC board we recognized the sense in combining forces. She was responsible for the OERC conference in December, 2000 and wanted my help: York Region and Grand Erie could be the sponsoring boards. We both realized that holding two action research conferences a year was overkill and too much work so the ARR team and the OERC team became one. What I did lose in that change was the move of the conference to Toronto where it had always been held. But that was the case only for one year since the 2001 conference was held in Brantford. While OERC supports all kinds of research, action research became the dominant theme and Jack Whitehead the keynote speaker in the December, 2000 and 2001 conference. I think it is worthy of note that while I am 'professionally selfish' in that I want the conference to be accessible to Grand Erie staff, I am most willing to share the opportunities because I think it expands the supports for classroom research and potentially contributes to sustainability.

How did this come about? When I joined the OERC board in 1999, I had no intention of becoming president; in fact, I had the opposite intention. I just didn't need the work. However, it was a combination in my mind of working with a person with that life-affirming energy (Bataille, 1962; Whitehead, 2000), Lindy Zaretsky, and providing 'comfortable stages' (Moffatt, 1998) for the teacher researchers to share their research (and Lindy's pressure) that I quickly moved onto the Executive. I could see Lindy's potential to influence systems if I coached her in the politics and processes. If OERC became a stronger organization, the continued support would be there for the teachers' sharing of their knowledge. Our e-mails over 2000-2001 are evidence of her questions, my responses and her willingness and excitement about learning.

I am always a teacher. I love to teach and learn. As I coach Lindy and Cheryl, I am aware of sharing my 'nous' so that they can be effective in working in organizations. I want to say this in humility because I realize that while I know some things, working with people like Lindy and Cheryl and the masters' students, I learn new ways of seeing the world. Both the 2000 and 2001 OERC Conferences were very successful, as evidenced in the evaluations; I have that purpose of accessibility for Grand Erie staff back on course and I am also planning for succession. Cheryl co-chaired the 2001 conference with me with a team of action researchers working with her on the program and she joined the OERC board in 2002 in my presidential year.

Another connection in this narrative is that of the Brock-GEDSB Masters Program. In 2000, Susan Drake was the President of OERC and one of the designers and instructors of the master's course. Part of the original design of the program was that the students would present at the OERC conference and submit a paper to The Ontario Action Researcher (OAR) (www.nipissingu.ca/oar). Because both Michael Manley-Casimir and I had access to funds, all of the students were able to present at the conference. 9 Because of my connections, the action research facilitators included: Tom Russell, Jack Whitehead, Jack MacFadden and Ron Wideman. Ron and I held an OAR board meeting at the conference and I managed a little time with Jack Whitehead to work on my thesis as well. The connections are present in the "communities of practice" (Stewart, 2001).

How transferable is systems knowing?

One of my learnings in this study is that despite the trauma of the restructuring, and its concomitant stressors, and without my moving to the Norfolk area of the board, I would not have grown or learned as much. 10 I changed school systems in essence with a new culture, new staff, new ways of doing things for me to understand, appreciate, adapt to and at times, change. In the Brant board I had come to the role of superintendent with credibility based on a good reputation in a variety of jobs and positive relationships with many people (needless to say, not all). In Norfolk I came not only with few personal relationships but also with the negative of coming from the 'take-over' board. In starting over I knew that it would be difficult but I had no idea how difficult. Because I had to start at square one with building relationships, I was forced to examine my values in foreign territory, to examine how I presented and how people related to me.

I find that systems knowledge is only partially transferable and very much contextual. I was very familiar with the Brant system but that did not mean that I was familiar with Norfolk. One of the major differences was that I did not start with well-developed historical relationships that would facilitate my entry to various people and places. Each meeting demanded my full attention to the dynamic, to the assumptions, to the relationships and to the preconceptions about who I was and what I symbolized for the group. That tension was very tiring. I rationalized that some of the negative perceptions were based on rumour and that if I could get in contact with people, they would see that I wasn't an ogre. I tried very hard to see the new system from their shoes and be patient and understanding of the time needed to bring about the change and the new relationships. I visited every school in my family in short order and negotiated a more democratic format for the family of schools meetings.

After four months, I asked the family of schools principals and vice-principals to evaluate my performance, much as I had in the former family of schools. 11 It was not an exercise in "group approval":

Sometimes we have to forego group approval and even accept rejection, if it should happen, in order to follow what the ancients called "scientia cordis," the science of the heart, which gives the inner strength to put truth, flowing from experience, over the need for approval. The science of the heart permits us to be vulnerable with others, not to fear them but to listen to them, to see their beauty and value, to understand them in all their fears, needs and hopes, even to challenge them if need be (Vanier, 1998, p. 88).

I did not expect wonderful reviews but the extent of the criticism 12 I was not prepared for. It was in the second year that the relationships began to build and I felt less of the tension when I entered rooms with groups of staff. Some people began to see me as one of them and invited me into the family. When I hired principals and staff to system support positions, I stressed their role in the new system, not the old. Gradually, there was less talk of 'Brantfordizing' and more of creating a new system of Grand Erie. It seems evident to me that I was enabled to learn about myself and my kind of leadership because I had been stripped of the clothing of past history and had been forced to reinvent myself as leader in my new family. Moreover, I have been able to carry on my purpose of improving the school system. While respecting the past history of the region, I have been educating social formations (Delong & Whitehead, 2001) which has frequently been in conflict with the habitus: 13

The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices -- more history -- in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception thought and action, tend to guarantee the 'correctness' of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms (Bourdieu, 1990, p.54).

Many of my colleagues retire with a feeling of disappointment at what they have been able to influence in their careers. I think that there is evidence within my embodied knowledge as I live my life as fully as I can according to my values and within the systems that I have influenced to account for myself. I do not want to look back on my life or my research with either Clark's (1997) pessimism or with the feelings of 'miserable failure' and 'painful awareness' so vividly described by Grant and Graue (1999) at the end of their three years as editors of the Review of Educational Research. They focus their awareness of their failure on the lack of practitioners' voices in the Review:

We tried to take some small steps to promote a more inclusive approach in research. In some ways it seems quite self important and arrogant now to think that we tried to make changes in a journal with such a long and esteemed history. But in other ways, we were trying merely to bring RER back to its roots of including diverse voice from the educational community. And that is where we failed most miserably. In looking back at the early volumes of the journal, we became painfully aware that we had been just as insular and just as provincial as our predecessors. We set up a conversation so that we, as academics, could talk to ourselves. We left out those off campus, who were actually doing much of the work of education. The editors of RER had spoken to them: "The Editorial Board presents this first issue in the confident expectations that it will be of great service to teachers, administrators, and general students of education." We had not. We got so caught up in the production of scholarship that we missed an opportunity to bring it to a broader audience (p. 395).

I want to focus on their failing 'most miserably, and their 'painful awareness' and move into a process of review and learning about educational research and theory which I think could help to avoid similar mistakes and pain for future editors of RER. In the next part of the chapter I describe and explain how I have actively sought to use my system's knowledge to improve student learning by supporting teacher and administrator's researching their practice and getting their voices into the public domain.

The process of researching my practice has provided a systematic means to better understand myself, my values and my transformation to a calmer, more balanced and more assured leader and to become more effective at mobilizing systems to support people. "This work we are about it as important a work as there is to be done. We must do it with courage, and with vision, but we must also do it with good theory and deep experience and practice -- and some grace" (Dolan, 1994, p.167).

Part B: Sustaining Support for Inquiry

This second part of Chapter Three analyses how I have managed to provide sustaining support for inquiry, reflection and scholarship as a systems manager. It focuses in particular on my influence on the development of a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship as I mobilize system supports and then create sustained supports through contributing to building communities and networks. The systematized knowledge that Catherine Snow (2001) is searching for already exists in my board, and other boards in Ontario. I begin with my initiation into action research, the beginning years in Brant, the supports that I built up to provide sustained support for the teachers and principals in my district and in other districts.

In this part of the thesis I am demonstrating my values as standards of practice of developing a culture of inquiry by providing system supports. As always, the valuing of the other runs through the descriptions and explanations since it is through them and with them in mind that I do my work as superintendent. I will start with my introduction to action research in 1995 and then move immediately to 2000 to the citations in my award for Leadership in Action Research. At the 2001 Ontario Educational Research Conference, the Director, Peter Moffatt 14 in his keynote address said:

One person deserves a lot of the credit for institutionalizing action research as an important component of the culture within our Board. This person has brought the force, the example, the support and the perseverance. She has developed the cadre of researchers who support each other. She has brought in the outside resources necessary to keep the movement fresh. She has been able to ignore the pessimists (Moffatt, 2001).

He presented me with the Board "goose keepsake" which recognizes extraordinary work toward our system goals of support and alignment, improved student learning, leadership development, communications and relationships and accountability. While I recognize that this is but one indicator, I will provide evidence over time of my claim to have contributed to building and supporting a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship. I will then provide a description and explanation of the growth of action research to arrive at a "critical mass" (Moffatt, 2001).

As a result of disciplined reflection on improving my practice my activities move from one innovative activity to another making connections through relationships as I move ever ahead with a vision of a system dedicated to improving students' learning in a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship. I describe my learning and setbacks as I carry on the teacher research activities even in the tumultuous years of creating the Grand Erie District School Board. As well as describing how I expand the supports that I have built up to provide sustained support for the teachers and principals in the former board into the new district, I also share my learning of the means to sustain activities and processes into other districts. The supports include networks, project teams, organizations, conferences, publications, accreditation and other human and material resources. I begin with small groups, invest personally in individuals and then support them to be the leaders in the communities or networks. In the research on change, one of the implications recommended for school districts is "think big, act small in multiple pilot projects on many interconnected themes" (Williams, 1992, p. 52).

Why did action research resonate with me?

In 1995, I was moving in a new direction and inadvertently and without any real understanding of the potential of action research I was leading my school system in that direction too. The idea that teacher research can improve teacher professionalism is not new but it was new to me. Buckingham saw it as the 'scientific spirit of inquiry':

It is my firm belief that the emancipation and professionalizing of the teacher's calling rests far more on the originality, insight, and expertness which the teacher evinces than upon any considerations having to do with salary, tenure, or legal status. Society cannot be compelled to respect anybody or anything. The surest way to win respect is to be respectable...[Nothing] would so effectively obtain for the teaching body the possession of professional expertness...as the open-eyed, open-minded, scientific spirit of inquiry (Buckingham, 1926, p. iv in Coutler, 1999, p. 4).

Seventy years later, Susan Lytle and Marilyn Cochran-Smith (1994) take it one step further to the redefining of knowledge:

Research by teachers represents a distinctive way of knowing about teaching and learning...[Teacher research] will fundamentally redefine the notion of knowledge for teaching, altering the locus of the knowledge base and realigning the practitioner's stance in relationship to knowledge generation in the field (p. 35-36) (Coulter, 1999).

Lytle and Cochrane-Smith (1999b) trace the trends in the teacher research movement (1999a) and also talk about "inquiry as stance" and "inquiry as agency: the culture of community" and in terms of the potential of teacher research:

From an inquiry stand, teacher leadership and group membership look very different from what they look like when teachers are "trained" in workshops or staff development projects. Taking an inquiry stance on leadership means that teachers challenge the purposes and underlying assumptions of educational change efforts rather than simply helping to specify or carry out the most effective methods for predetermined ends (1999b, p. 294-5).

Building on the work of Donald Schön (1983) and reinforcing it with an emphasis on teaching as a valued-laden practice (p.9), Tony and Kaye Ghaye (1998) created an evidence-based (p. 9) reflection-on-practice model which is cyclical, flexible, focused and holistic:

It is about knowing if reflection has led to any valued outcomes. Two of these are improvements in teaching and learning. Reflection-on-practice is a natural process of making sense of professional action: it is about using and learning from experience. Making sense of teaching is about seeing the process of reflection as a meaning-making process. Not only is this necessary for good teaching, it is also a fundamental human necessity (p.6-7).

And in 2000, Richard Pring reviewed the work of Stenhouse (1975), Elliott (1991) and Foster (1999) in the field of 'teacher as researcher' and concluded:

The notion of teacher as researcher is important. It is crucial to the growth of professional knowledge. It is a refinement of the intelligent engagement in an 'educational practice'. It is a refreshing counterbalance to those who, in treating 'educational practice' as an object of science, necessarily fail to understand it. It is reassertion of the crucial place of professional judgment in an understanding of a professional activity (2000, p. 138).

It seemed to me in 1995, given my educational experience and my experience in professional development activities in the board and in teachers' federations that the connection between teacher research-based professionalism, improving student learning and professional development made sense and had great potential for a better educational system.

Linda Grant, Executive Assistant, OPSTF, then Manager of PD Services, OCT and now educational consultant. I have known Linda, a member of my Validation Group, for ten years.

How did we get started in action research in Brant County?

In the winter of 1994-5, Linda Grant, Executive Assistant for the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation (OPSTF) and I represented OPSTF on The Common Curriculum: Policies and Outcomes, Grades 1-9 (1995) Implementation Team. The criteria the team established for organizations to access the $1.9 Million Innovation Fund set up to implement the curriculum included innovation, partnerships, improving student learning outcomes, willingness to share results, in-service training, and the use of technologies. Linda had visited with Jack Whitehead at the University of Bath in 1993 and came back with the idea of making a proposal to use action research as a process to implement the curriculum. She talked to me about this idea of action research as having the potential to be a superior means of professional development as she had seen it at Wootten Bassett School near Bath University. This is an example of how ideas can travel from continent to continent: from this germ of an idea came a whole movement in Ontario. Linda drafted the proposal which would include four Ontario boards of education, Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation (OPSTF), Television Ontario (TVO), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) and Queen's University. The proposal was awarded $200,000 in June of 1995. From this point emerged the birth and growth of action research in my life and in my board.

Lori Barkans, Anna Morgan, Bev MacDonald, elementary classroom teachers, risk-takers extraordinaire. I have known them for six years. They were part of the original Group of Seven.

During the winter of 1995-96, I recruited and arranged training for teams of teachers to conduct action research in order to implement the new curriculum. In February 1996 in Toronto, we held a forum, Act Reflect Revise, for the teams from the four boards to meet in facilitated sessions to share their processes and research. The teachers were willing to take a risk, as was I, having faith in the potential of action research to improve student learning, to honour teacher professionalism and to help improve our practice. Lori Barkans, a member of the pilot study, the Group of Seven, wrote,

It has become a source of great amusement to each of us that we volunteered so readily for such a mammoth undertaking without even fully understanding the meaning of the words 'Action Research'. We did not feel any pressure when being given one hour to decide if we were interested in this unique project. All we knew was that it would be an opportunity to explore new options and, hopefully, improve the quality of the education that we were able to offer to our students (Barkans in Barkans, MacDonald, & Morgan, 1996. p. 23).

In her writing it is easy to recognize the desire of the group to improve their practice for the benefit of students as well as my frequent flaw of moving processes ahead too fast. The comments the teachers made about the impact of the action research processes on their lives made the investment well worth the time and energy. "Action Research has allowed me to grow as a professional...Throughout this whole process, I have felt in complete control of all aspects, along with my two colleagues" (MacDonald, 1996, p.24) and "...there is satisfaction in knowing that in some small way you have tried to make a change, and at the same time, you have been able to grow as a professional." (Morgan, 1996, p.25).

Fran MacLean, vice-principal, Ed Wilson and Jeff Churchward, classroom teachers, presenting their research at the OERC Conference, December 5, 2000. I have known them for six years. They were part of the Group of Seven.

The story of the beginning of action research in the four boards is described in the issues of the Act Reflect Revise Newsletter (Grant, 1995-96) and in Act Reflect Revise Revitalize (Halsall & Hossack, 1996). The stories specific to the Brant County Board of Education are found in several articles: "OPSTF Sponsored Common Curriculum Innovation Fund Action Research Project: Action Research and Teacher Networking" (Grant, 1996); "A Journey Through Action Research" (Barkans, MacDonald, & Morgan, 1996) and "Banbury Heights Action Research: Home/School Partnerships" (Wilson & Churchward, 1996); "The Role of the Superintendent in Facilitating and Supporting the Action Research Process" (Delong, 1996); "Action Research: School Improvement that Honours Teacher Professionalism" (Delong & Wideman, 1996).

We learned a great deal during the 1995-96 school year about teaching and supporting action research processes. We had no manuals for what we were doing and were unaware of stories of people who were experienced in teaching practising teachers and administrators from whom to learn. Jean McNiff's work was very helpful, particularly her booklet Action Research For Professional Development (McNiff, 1995). Tom Russell came from Queens' University to share his experiences with teaching teachers to conduct action research and Lynne Hannay wrote a booklet for OPSTF Learning in Action Thinkbook (Hannay, 1995) that year and as well provided training sessions for the teachers in the boards "to help them formulate research questions and begin to establish appropriate data gathering techniques" (Hannay, 1996, p.72). During the January workshop on Data Collection and Analysis, I remember the surprise and dismay of the Banbury teachers, Jeff Churchward and Ed Wilson, when they realized that the data (and they had boxes of it) they were collecting were not answering the question they had formulated. They very good-naturedly accepted that and went back to the drawing board.

It is important to remember that as these teachers were learning action research, they were learning a new curriculum and the role of the technology at the same time. My friend and colleague, Ron Wideman had moved from the Ministry of Education to TVOntario by this time and was part of a telephone conference to allow the teams to discuss curriculum issues. The photo of that conference call is interesting in that the participants are looking at the telephone! Now that we have videoconferencing working, it seems rudimentary communication.

In addition to publication of the projects in Act Reflect Revise Revitalize (Halsall & Hossack, 1996), both the Branlyn and the Banbury teams received much public attention for their work in presentations to the board and provincial curriculum associations, local and provincial conference workshops especially during the 1996-97 school year. The Banbury team was featured in a Globe and Mail feature on homework and on national radio. As a result of her work, Lori Barkans was appointed to the Ontario College of Teachers' committee on creating Standards of Practice for the province.

From outside the board, Lynne Hannay, Head and Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Midwestern Centre (OISE/UT) with Research Officer Kathleen Schmalz completed a research project on the pilot projects in the four boards. Lynne conducted two workshops with the Brant teams and was involved in three of the forums. Kathleen interviewed Brant staff individually and in groups and made a report: "Report for the Brant County Board of Education: Observations arising from the 1996/97 study entitled: Action Research: Facilitating Teachers' Professional Learning" (Hannay, 1998). It was a strange experience to hear Lynne present her research, Action Research: Facilitating Teachers' Professional Learning (Hannay, 1998) at a session in the 1998 AERA in San Diego, and never once mention that one of the 'insiders' in the study was in the audience. It was the first time I had a sense of what it feels like to be the object of research, the one researched about, the one without a voice. And I didn't like the feeling. Some feelings you just have to experience to deeply understand. As I write this, that sense of being violated floods back through my veins and it makes me angry. I make this point not to blame Lynne but to share what I felt: academic research from the outside can take away a person's voice and leave them feeling used and thrown away. It is important to say that the report was highly complimentary and, although it doesn't name me specifically, I was "the superintendent" (Hannay, 1998; Schmalz, 1998) referred to in the references to Brant County:

The Superintendent was cited as an important catalyst to the project's success. S/he provided knowledge of action research, support, a trust relationship and placed no pressure on participants. S/he initiated project involvement, gave strategic support, did the writing, provided extra professional development, gave personal support and was said to facilitate a "feeling of accomplishment" in teacher-participants (Schmalz, 1998). 15

The Group of Seven -- Lori Barkans, Anna Morgan, Bev MacDonald, teachers, and Jesse MacDonald, principal, and Ed Wilson, Jeff Churchward, teachers, and Fran MacLean, vice-principal - became the workshop leaders for other staff to learn action research. Jean McNiff came in 1997 to teach and support them and Jack Whitehead came to teach, encourage and support the networks of action researchers on an annual basis. As the Group of Seven learned the process of action research, I learned as well. It was collaborative learning at its best (Delong, 1996b). After February, 1996 when I began my Ph.D. journey, I became a much better support for them as I researched my own practice.

York Region Leadership in Action Research Award (OERC)

From those early beginnings I want to take you to the Ontario Educational Research Conference (OERC) on December, 2000 where I was awarded the York Region/OERC Leadership in Action Research Award that I received. Lindy Zaretsky, President-Elect of the OERC said in her presentation of the award:

You are cited for:

• Facilitating the building of research networks to support a culture of inquiry and continuous improvement in classroom and school based research practices;

Modelling reflective inquiry;

• Providing direct leadership and support to educators to enhance research-based professionalism in schools and classrooms;
• Providing opportunities for individuals to develop their own leadership capacity for innovative practice;
• Promoting the growth of a professional generated through action research.

I recognize that the award is a single event but the evidential base for the award is extensive and I will provide it in the following descriptions and explanation of the supports that I have created and connected for inquiry, reflection and scholarship in my school system.

Lindy Zaretsky, York Region Vice-Principal, President of OERC, presenting me with the first 'Leadership in Action Research Award', December 8, 2000. I have known Lindy and her tireless efforts for action research for four years.

The Growth of the Action Research Supports, 1997-2001

A Brief Overview

After the first projects and during the early years, 1997-1999, I invested personally in professional development sessions to teach teachers and administrators to conduct action research by leading many workshops in Ontario on action research, most in Brant and Grand Erie but others in the Peel and Toronto Boards, in Huron County with Jean McNiff and in Ottawa with Ron Wideman. Every year I brought in Jack Whitehead to talk to groups both locally and provincially. It was a signal to us of the progress we had made that during 1998-99, Jack and I felt that he had done enough 'awareness sessions' in Grand Erie and that from then on we would only conduct sessions with people who were actually conducting action research and needing support. In 2002 that is still the case: the awareness sessions are conducted by staff in the projects and area networks. Jack and I support those already engaged in data collection, analysis and writing.

I started the monthly meetings of Brant Action Research Network (BARN) and organized the Act Reflect Revise conferences where staff could learn and get support. For the first four years, I held the weight on my shoulders. During the 1997-98 school year, I met once a month with a group of ten to twelve action researchers, providing support and teaching them the process, as they needed it. Cheryl Black conducted a project in her classroom as her performance review process and grew steadily in her knowledge and skill. Over the next year, the supports grew steadily in the Brant board with Diane Morgan and Cheryl Black 16 taking more of the weight and then gradually extending the influence into the Grand Erie Board. With the new board, I was able to pass the leadership of the support networks onto Cheryl and Heather Knill-Griesser, Dave and Lynn Abbey and Peter and Paula Rasokas.

In 2001-2002, from a group of seven, the numbers have risen to well over 100 staff currently conducting action research projects in Grand Erie and a publication of thirty-five Grand Erie completed projects (Delong, 2001b). Action research is integral to leadership programs; the Ontario Action Researcher is in its fourth volume and principals are researching their practice for their performance appraisal process. An Action Research Approach to Improving Student Learning Using Provincial Test Results (Wideman et al., 2000) and Passion in Professional Practice: Action Research in Grand Erie (Delong, 2001b) have been published. Two groups of Japanese professors have visited to see action research in a school system, the Ontario Educational Research Council (OERC) conference focused on action research in 2000 and 2001 and fifteen masters student in a local cohort, who graduated with their action research degrees, are the new cadre of leaders.

This has been a "passionate enquiry" (Dadds, 1995). It is truly delightful to feel that the personal drive, commitment and passion that I poured into the first three years of action research in the Brant board and despite the slowdown caused by trauma of restructuring of education, I can now play the supporting role. I encourage, provide opportunities and resources in a supporting role so that now I can focus on and enjoy watching the growth and development of the teacher researchers. While the work is never done, it is interesting that new people are discovering its impact. At the Teacher Training Agency conference "Using Research and Evidence To Improve Teaching and Learning" on March 7, 2001, Jean Rudduck pointed out to the group that while many people have just discovered teacher research, Jack Whitehead has been encouraging and supporting it for over 20 years and Catherine Snow (2001) is still looking for systematized knowledge. That support and inspiration for me and the action researchers in Grand Erie is Jack Whitehead. In addition, I want to make very clear that I was able to do all of these activities because Peter Moffatt 17 was working with me to create that culture of inquiry and encouraging me in the processes. In the Action Research Kit video he said:

What will be necessary to make action research a vital element is the opportunity to dialogue and share. And I think that is where some of the system supports can come into place. And so, as Director of Education, I think we can support action research by facilitating the dialogue, by seeing that people engaged in any form of research are given the opportunity to share their findings on a stage that they are comfortable with. And certainly research projects involve the need for additional resources, or financial or technical I think the system can facilitate it. I guess the best thing you can do to support action research at the system level is to create a culture that values research and that recognizes the research that has been carried out and the fact that the teacher is the person best situated to conduct research on learning and improve education (Delong & Wideman, 1998c, transcript, p. 7).

That is the overview. Now I will share the variety of supports that I have created to support and sustain action research, to get the voices of the teachers and administrators heard and published and to build a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship. First the networks that I initiated and developed and now are sustained through the leadership of Cheryl Black, Heather Knill-Griesser, Paula Rasokas, Dave and Lynn Abbey and Karen McDonald.

The Networks: Brant Action Research Network (BARN), Cayuga Action Research (CAR) and Simcoe Action Research Team (SART)

It was at a session that Jack Whitehead was giving to my 'Leaders of the Future' program that he asked me (in front of the group, of course), "What kinds of sustained support are you providing the leaders so that they can continue their research and learning?" The issue of sustained support is one that has stayed with me and comes to my attention any time I think some effort or program is done. It was with this prompt that in September, 1997, I sent an invitation to the system inviting staff to BARN, modelled after the Bath Action Research Group but with monthly meetings as opposed to weekly. Each session included a presentation with the early presenters from the Group of Seven and some dialogue and varied in size from ten to twenty participants. In terms of what made the difference in attendance at these meetings, it seemed that careful timing to avoid busy times of the year like report card writing, interesting presentations like 'Using the Internet for Research' and having food available were contributors to higher attendance.

During the 1997-98 school year, I led the groups and as Elaine MacAskill, teacher consultant, gained confidence, she took more and more ownership. In the workshops, Elaine worked with Fran MacLean, who was vice-principal at Banbury Heights, one of the pilot schools, to teach the process and coach staff afterwards. This was a frustrating year because of the political unrest and the teacher strike that lasted two weeks but impacted on activities for months before and after. When we did get things going in the January, the group varied from ten to twelve. One of the changes I made in the second year was I added an additional meeting just for follow up from a workshop session on an aspect of the action research process and for informal sharing and dialogue. I used Jean McNiff's (1988; 1992) publications and You and Your Action Research Project (McNiff, Lomax & Whitehead, 1996) as well as the kit (Delong & Wideman, 1998) for teaching the research process. A new tool I used that year that Linda Grant had given me was Field-Based Research: A Working Guide (B.C. Ministry of Education, 1992). Also this year I was giving new attention to teachers who were conducting action research projects as part of their teacher performance review (TPR) process. I had managed to get the action research process as part of the TPR system and had the begrudging support if not encouragement of members of Executive Council. One of these teachers was Cheryl Black. 18 Her project, Developing Self-Esteem: An Action Research Project (1998), inspired many others to take up the challenge to research their own practice in addition to the benefit derived by Cheryl and her students.

In 1998-2000 I was consumed with the work of the amalgamation of the school boards. 19 Cheryl provided the leadership for BARN bringing together the group. She also was the system leader of CAR and SART although there were local leaders in Elaine Cooper, Paula Rasokas and Peter Rasokas. We described our research of this process in our paper for ICTR 1999: How can we, as teacher and superintendent, improve our practice by assessing our influence on each other in our roles as educational leaders and critical friends? (Black & Delong, 1999). The culminating event, a dinner meeting on June 22, 1999 for all three groups, was two presentations, one by Heather Knill-Griesser (2000) from BARN and Lori Weins (2000) from SART. Both of the presentations were reviewed and published in the spring 2000 issue of the Ontario Action Researcher electronic journal (OAR), guest-edited by Cheryl Black and Peter Rasokas (2000).

In 2000-2001, Cheryl Black and Heather Knill-Griesser were co-leaders of BARN with Heather, now teacher consultant, beginning to pick up more of the load of BARN. I was pleased to see the succession in such capable hands. Both SART and CAR also had capable new leaders -- Paula Rasokas and Karen McDonald. In 2001-2 Karen McDonald was joined by Christine Stewart, program consultant, in the leadership of CAR and that group, the one that was slowest to start, in 2002, is now the fastest-growing.

Simcoe Support Action Research Network (SSARN) and Covey Action Research Team (CART)

After a number of workshops on the process of conducting action research given by Jack Whitehead and me in my new family of schools, I set up support groups that I committed to work with myself even though I was finding direct involvement very difficult since amalgamation and fewer superintendents. I wanted to get action research into the culture of the areas of the board other than Brant. Starting in September, 1999, I met once a month with two groups who accepted an invitation to dialogue about their action research projects: five program support staff from the Simcoe School Support Office and six people who had taken the Covey Seven Habits (Covey, 1992) training in July, 1998: five principals, two from the former Brant Area, one from the former Haldimand area and three from the former Norfolk area, and Brad Kuhn, Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario (ETFO) Executive Assistant. Because I wanted to clearly demonstrate support for research-based professionalism in my area office and connect it to the Covey training, I committed the time to these two groups. They were willing learners and came with commitment to the process and thoughts and writings to share. It was informal and frequently I provided lunch. For a first year group, I was pleased that two written projects from SSARN were submitted for review. Several of them came to the year end session on June 22 and others committed to finishing written projects. One of my regrets was that I was not better prepared for the sessions but perhaps because I have a penchant for organizing everything, their informality was their strength!

Rick Denton, Greg Buckles, Dave Pyper, Jesse McDonald, June Ayrhart, elementary principals, members of the Voices of Principals action research group. I have known them for 10-15 years.

Voices of Principals

Linda Grant, OPSTF Executive Assistant, invited me to conduct a research study with principals using action research. OPSTF would fund the production of a paper on the role of the principal for use in responding to the declared intention of the provincial government to remove principals and vice-principals from the union. I began in January, 1997 working with a group of seven elementary principals, five from my family of schools and two others, all volunteers, all of whom had responded to an invitation to research their practice. Elaine MacAskill, program consultant, Career Education and Community Relations, joined the group in April. The once-a-month sessions were a combination of dialogue around the process of researching your practice and the roles and responsibilities of the principal. Sometimes I listened; sometimes I talked about the process; sometimes I facilitated dialogue on themes and metaphors. The sessions were taped and transcribed and I frequently asked for written feedback on how I was doing at facilitating the process. All that year, 1997, we made progress on getting their stories written and published. One principal asked to withdraw after a few sessions citing discomfort with producing an adequate story and I readily gave her permission to leave but kept the door open for her to return. I didn't think there were any hard feelings because near the end of the work, she came to hear how we had done.

Six principals produced six wonderful stories, some more ready to publish than others. I had planned to pull the publication together with Elaine in August of 1998. Like the 1999 Act Reflect Revise conference, obstacles got in the way: Elaine moved to be a vice-principal in another board; Linda moved on to the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT); the principals had their own issues to resolve; I was surviving amalgamation and new responsibilities. This was, however, my responsibility and I had failed to fulfill it. Not like me. It haunts me to this day. It's easy to say that in the pressures of change, things get lost but it doesn't salve my conscience and it doesn't fade away. A failure doesn't feel good. However, there is new hope. In a November 21, 2001 e-mail, David Pyper, one of the group, requested the unedited book for an Ontario Principals' Council Committee examining the work of principals. This is clearly one of those "stories of ruin" (Lather, 1994 in MacLure, 1996).

I did, however, learn a great deal about supporting action research. This was my first group since the action research pilot group. Several sessions at the beginning were committed simply to building a supportive atmosphere where it was safe to talk about your values, beliefs, concerns and failures. The attendance at the sessions indicated their enjoyment of the sessions and commitment to the project. I worked hard at letting them find their own way to express their values and explanation of their professional lives. As I said, "I want to avoid being prescriptive so that your stories will be individual and true to your lives. There is no model for telling your story" (transcript of session, April, 1997). They were willing gatherers of data around their practice. The most difficult part was getting them to write their stories. I met with some of them individually to see if I could help get them writing. Greg Buckles who was one of the group who responded with trepidation to the writing process. 20 Gradually during the summer and fall of 1997, some stories started coming in and Elaine and I reviewed them, gave them feedback and in the fall there were four completed stories and then by early in 1998, all six. I was beginning to realize that I needed to find a way to get the action researchers writing earlier in the process. This was confirmed for me in working with Cheryl and BARN. 21

Now I want to talk about the conferences that I have planned and/or supported so that teachers' and administrators' voices would be heard and their research and learning would be shared on comfortable platforms (Moffatt, 1998) and in supportive communities.

Conferences

I. Act Reflect Revise, 1997-2001

The Ministry of Education Innovation Fund money was allocated for the 1995-96 school year but Linda Grant and I knew that we could manage to stretch it out until Christmas of 1996. On the plane to New York AERA in April of 1996, we talked about next steps and decided to run another Act Reflect Revise (ARR) forum in 1997, this time in Brantford and to make it self-sufficient. The conference involved many of the same players -Jack, Tom, Lynne, and Ron. The exception was that by the time of the conference, Marg Couture, Executive Assistant at OPSTF replaced Linda who had taken a new job at the Ontario College of Teachers. Also Jean McNiff was going to attend. I was a member of the conference planning team, introducing speakers and leading several sessions.

I have never been able to just do one thing at a time. Ron and I used the conference as an invitation to participants to contribute to a second publication of action research projects as part of a kit that would include a video. During the forum, board program staff organized interviews with fifteen participants taped by a local photographer to log over six hours of tape. As if organizing that wasn't enough, I also scheduled a meeting of my validation team-Jean, Jack, Tom, Linda, Andre Dolbec for University of Quebec in Hull and Peter Moffatt (transcript and video 23/02/97). In addition I chaired a meeting of an action research symposium group with the same group with the addition of Marg and Jack MacFadden, president of Ontario Education Research Council. (transcript, 23/02/97) Jennifer James (1996) says, "Entrepreneurs and those with what I call 'menagerie minds' create resilience by always being immersed in a variety of projects and interests. They never depend on only one way to energize themselves, solve a problem or earn a living" (p. 43). I'm not sure those around me think I create resilience but I do get energy from a variety of projects and interests.

The evaluations of the conference were so good (ARR II Evaluations, 1998) that another ARR forum ran in Grand Bend in April of 1998. Again Jack, Tom, Ron and I were involved. From Brant, presenters included the Branlyn and Banbury teams, the compensatory education project with Ruth Mills (2000), the Voices of Principals with Greg Buckles and Dave Pyper, Elaine MacAskill on beginning action research and Ron Wideman and I presented the Action Research Kit (1998) which had just been released.

Just when you think you can assume something is a 'fixture', it falls apart. A third forum planned for April, 1999 in Waterloo County failed. It failed for lack of registration but mostly because of staff change and overload -- all of us -- Marg Couture, Ron Wideman, Waterloo staff, me -- were in the throes of upheaval and amalgamation. These conferences are dependent on the local team and in this case the Waterloo superintendent who contracted to support the conference retired and no one picked up the responsibility. However, we learned some things about what we needed to do for the next one. So I talked to Marg Couture in June, 1999 and offered to hold the Act Reflect Revise Forum on February 17-18, 2000 in Brantford. A conference team of friends and colleagues and a plan was in place: Cheryl Black to chair the committee with Grand Erie staff, James Ellsworth and ETFO representatives; Jack Whitehead would be keynote speaker; Peter Moffatt to give the luncheon address; Marg Couture and ETFO would manage the contracts, marketing and registration; Ron Wideman would be a facilitator.

These pieces came together very quickly because of my conference-planning knowledge, my past experience with the ARR, my academic and professional networks and the critical mass of action researchers in the board: a combination of knowledge, experience, relationships and connections. The personal relationships and experience make projects like this enjoyable. Then a transition took place with the combination of ARR and OERC Conferences.

Nancy Carroll, grade 3 teacher, Houghton Public School presenting at OERC, 2000 on her research on her practice.

II. Ontario Educational Research Council Conference, (OERC), 1997-2001

Since 1996, wherever I've been involved in educator groups, I have taken the action research process with me. My involvement on the Ontario Educational Research Council (OERC) Board and my work on the annual conference is another vehicle for supporting action research. I encouraged and supported teacher researchers to present their research at this conference for the years of 1999 and 2000 and brought Jack Whitehead to speak to the gathering. At the 2000 conference, fifteen Masters students (teachers, consultants and school administrators), four consultants and three teachers presented their action research projects and three other teachers attended with my support. The Grand Erie District School Board (GEDSB) group represented a significant number of the group in attendance.

The value of getting teacher researchers to present and be publicly accountable for their learning is captured in "Cohort Story: Re-Searching Together" by Robert Ogilvie (2000), one of the Master's students. I had worked hard to get them all in attendance at the OERC conference in 2000 in terms of finding the money and organizing the sessions with Jack Whitehead, but the benefit was clear:

We are lined up side by side in a manner that reminds me of Monday Night Football where players introduce themselves in little video clips....

Phillip Sallewsky, Intermediate core French, Grand Erie District,...negotiating curriculum.

Janie Senko, Grade 5, Grand Erie District,..... integrating curriculum

Marilyn Davis, Secondary English, Grand Erie District.... improving student writing.

And so it goes, through all thirteen of us......not linebackers, quarterbacks and kickers, and hardly the Miami Dolphins, but a real team nonetheless. We are the Brock/Grand Erie Masters Cohort, and seated in a row on either side of Jack Whitehead, we recite the litany of our names, jobs, and thesis/project topics to the assembled audience at the 2000 Ontario Educational Research Council conference. I am the first to speak and as we move down the line I am at first attentive to the audience, but then quickly drawn back to a focus on us, for I am forcefully struck by how articulate, clear and confident we have all become. This is not at all the nervous, halting and uncertain group which began together fifteen months ago, and I wonder yet again about the process that has enabled this to be so." (p.1).

I know from my own experience of presenting my work and holding myself accountable in a public forum that the preparation is as important as the actual presentation. A great deal of learning goes on as I try to synthesize what I've learned from my research and the dialogue with the academic and practitioner groups is invaluable in moving my thinking onto the next stage. Marion Kline articulated the same experience. 22

The 2001 OERC Conference team: Peter Rasokas, Heather Knill-Griesser, Cheryl Black, me, Karen McDonald, Lynn Abbey, Geoff Suderman-Gladwell, Dave Abbey.

In December 2001, Ontario Educational Research Council Conference, 2001, Brantford, Ontario: Co-Sponsored by Grand Erie DSB and York Region DSB: "Improving Student Learning: How Do I-You Know?" again shared the knowledge base of the practitioner-scholars in GEDSB and other boards. GEDSB staff constituted half the participants and half the presenters.

III. International Conference on Teacher Research

Each of the years 1997-2001, at the International Conference on Teacher Research attached either at the beginning or end of AERA, the quality of teacher presentations in researching their classroom practice has impressed me. For the 1999 ICTR in Magog, Quebec, I sponsored, with financial assistance from GEDSB, ETFO and Ont. ASCD, four GEDSB staff to attend the conference: one principal, one vice-principal, one elementary and one secondary teacher. I felt particularly proud that two classroom teachers, whom I had coached through action research projects, Lori Barkans (Squire & Barkans, 1999) and Cheryl Black (Black & Delong, 1999), made presentations. Lori presented with Fran Squire on their work in developing the standards for the College of Teachers and Cheryl and I presented our joint research on supporting action research as a self-improvement/professional development model. Both of the teachers wrote their research papers as a result of their interest in action research and with the active involvement and support of another researcher.

Cheryl Black and I presenting at ICTR in Magog, Quebec, 1999 our research on our influence in supporting practitioners to research their practice. Note our pleasure as we enjoy working and sharing our experiences.

I have vivid memories of the workshop session which Cheryl and I led which was advertised as a special session for administrators (ICTR brochure, 23/04/99). We planned the session to be experiential by having them write in journals about a recent incident in their lives that conjured up strong emotion so that they would have a deeper understanding of the potential of action research to tap into their values on education. As we were teaching the action research process using their sharing of those incidents, Cheryl was doing her part of the workshop when she lost her train of thought. I didn't know whether to step in or hope that she would get back on track. I was afraid that if I moved into her part, she would lose confidence. Also with my being in the perceived 'power position' (she, the teacher; me, the superintendent), I worried that the group might be offended by a misuse of power. As I discussed in Chapter Two, Cheryl and I have explored the power issues frequently and feel that beyond our caring relationship, our ability to work in a collegial way, our joint papers, which include both voices (Black & Delong, 1999; 2000), demonstra