Border Crossings: Researching across Contexts for Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

For an adult educator, there is perhaps no educational context more uncomfortable and puzzling than one filled with young children. Everything about an early childhood classroom is unlike one meant for adult learners: the tiny desks and chairs, the relentless colours and images on the walls, the festive songs and clapping, the carpet squares to sit on, and the strict, well-taught routines for everything from sharpening one’s pencil to moving from one room to another. It is a foreign space for a teacher of adults. In a collaborative project to explore early literacy instruction, a handful of adult English language educators and I chose to venture into this new environment. To walk past the macaroni art on the walls and to enter a kindergarten classroom was a professional border crossing for us. Yet, it proved to be a crossing full of intellectual challenge and changing perspectives, and the teachers who joined me to research early literacy across these contexts can attest to both their initial discomfort and, in the end, to their gratitude for the experience.