• Activity 1: The Doubting and Believing Game (45 min) Whole group. Participants uncover hidden assumptions about particular beliefs or practices.
  
  
• Activity 2: Examining Our Assumptions (2 hrs) Whole group. Participants use their research situations and problem statements to identify and examine assumptions about teaching, learning, and adult students.
  
  
• Activity 3: Sharing Excitements, Questions, and Concerns (30 min) Whole group. Facilitator(s) respond to participants' questions about research and carrying out a project.

Activity 1: The Doubting and Believing Game*

Group Process:

Frame the session: Welcome participants if this is the first session in the day and review your agenda of activities. Explain that, in the sessions remaining in Meeting One, participants will continue to analyze their research situations and refine their problem statements with a view to coming up with their initial research questions.

Stop for a moment and collect the "homework" assignment that participants did in between Sessions 3 and 4, Excitements, Questions, and Concerns About Research.

Introduce the Doubting and Believing Game. Explain that this activity builds on the work they accomplished earlier in the meeting. That is, what they learned in their discussion of Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (Session 2) and the activity Understanding the Issues for Research (Session 3). Remind participants, for example, that every researcher-practitioner-person has assumptions about a subject.

Ask participants to comment on what they've learned thus far about hunting for assumptions and how that relates to being practitioner researchers. Lessons learned include, for example:

• It's important for researchers to identify, clarify, and question the assumptions they have about the subject(s) they want to investigate - before designing the research project.
  
• A goal of educational research is to initiate change and bring about improvement; hence, it is important to challenge the ideas and beliefs that guide what we do on a daily basis.

Next, explain that the Doubting and Believing Game (in a pro/con format) gives the group an opportunity to discover and discuss their assumptions about good teaching practice, adult learning and adult students.

Steps:

1.Begin by posting a thought provoking, generalized statement (with the group's interests and experience in mind.)

2.Each participant divides a piece of paper into two halves and writes a list of reasons to doubt the statement and a list of reasons to believe the statement.

3.Next, participants take turns sharing their doubts one at a time in a group go-round until everyone's list is exhausted.

4.Finally each participant's list of beliefs is shared until those lists are exhausted. As everyone calls out their ideas, have someone list the doubts and beliefs on poster paper.

(Alternatively, the large group can be divided equally into a group of doubters and a group of believers. Each group is responsible for writing a list of doubts or a list of beliefs.)

5.Regardless of whether the Doubting and Believing Game is "played" by individuals or by small groups, this activity leads to a discussion of common and divergent themes from the group.

6. Ask participants to identify the assumptions or beliefs about teaching they see embedded in the lists of doubts and beliefs.

Questions to use to guide the debriefing discussion include:

• Do the lists have any assumptions in common? If yes, do they represent what passes for conventional wisdom in the field?
  
• How do the lists differ? If there are major differences, to what extent might these signify divergent views in the field?
  
• Finally, find out what participants learned from this activity. What implications are there for participants' research?

(45 minutes)
________________________________________________________________________
*The Doubting and Believing Game: The Inquiry Facilitators Handbook, Pennsylvania Adult Literacy Practitioner Inquiry Network (PALPIN), 1998.

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Activity 2: Examining Our Assumptions*

Group Process:

Introduce the activity: Point out to participants that, in the Doubting and Believing Game, a generalized statement, e.g., we teach to save the world, created the text (or the data) that participants used to uncover/identify their assumptions about teaching/learning.

Tell the group that in this activity they will identify the assumptions embedded in their research situations and problems. Explain that they will use the following questions to structure small group discussions:

• What assumptions about adult learners, good practice, and learning are imbedded in your problem?
  
  
• What assumptions do you think informed your choice of a research problem? In other words, what does this particular choice say about what is important to you?

Explain that participants will use their pre-meeting writing assignments. And they will work in the same small group of critical friends they used in Session 3, Activity 2: Understanding the Issues. The groups comprise three-four participants who are compatible and who share similar research-practice interests.

Facilitators will model this activity for the whole group. Frame this by briefly revisiting the Activity 2: Understanding the Issues, Session 3. Remind participants of how they explored some of the factors contributing to their research interests, and why: the purpose of the exploration was to expand/enhance their overall understanding of their research situation and its complexities.

Explain that this activity is similar in that you are encouraging the group to delve deeper into their individual situations and selves; to examine first impressions; to question and discuss; to consider different views; to generate new ideas about the subject of research.

Steps:

1. Distribute the Instructions for Critical Friends handout. Walk through the instructions with the whole group. Model this activity for participants using your (the facilitator's) pre-meeting writing assignment (or another practitioner researcher's entry, if necessary).

2. Before participants disperse for small group work, ask for clarification questions. Gently remind participants of the activity's purpose and (like in Understanding the Issues) "critical friends" are not supposed to offer advice or suggest possible solutions at any time during the discussion.

4. Tell the group to spend some time at the end of their discussion to reflect individually and write about their assumptions and beliefs, and their current view of their research problems.

5. Explain that they should be prepared to report on what they have come to understand better or view differently about their research situation - and themselves- when they return to the larger group.

6. Allow thirty minutes to introduce the activity and model it for the whole group. Allow approximately one hour for the small group work, dividing the time to focus equally on each person's research.

(While the participants are at work, the facilitator(s) can prepare for the next activity: Sharing Excitements, Questions, and Concerns. Read and organize the participant's homework, that is, the excitements, questions, and concerns they submitted at the beginning of this session.)

7. Reconvene the larger group to debrief the activity, Examining Our Assumptions. Use the following questions to guide your discussion:

• What did participants learn about their research situation?
  
• What do participants now understand better?
  
• What was the most challenging aspect of this activity?

Finally, respond to participants' other questions and comments, as time permits.

________________________________________________________________________
* Practitioner Inquiry for Staff Development and Program Improvement: A Facilitation Guide for Local Adult Literacy Programs (1998) Department of Adult Education, University of Georgia. Adapted from the Action Learning Tool Kit (1997) Partners For the Learning Organization.

(15 minute break)

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Activity 3: Sharing Excitements, Questions, and Concerns

Group Process:

In this activity, the facilitator reads and responds to the excitements, questions and concerns that participants have expressed about practitioner research. These represent what the group was thinking and feeling about carrying out a research project and about the research process in general -- mid-way in Meeting One.

1. First, read aloud all the group's "excitements." Invite a few comments from participants.

2. Next, read and respond to as many of the participants' questions and concerns as possible. Maybe you can address everyone's remarks in the time, especially if you've found a lot of similarities and have synthesized the items.

3. If time runs out before you can address all the participants' issues, assure the group that you will respond later in the meeting or after the group has returned home. (In the 1999-2000 Virginia Adult Education Research Network, for example, one of the facilitators responded via e-mail. View sample participant concerns and facilitator response.)


Conclusion of the session

Session 5: What Makes a Good Research Question?

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