This term I'm supervising 5 students doing 'Action Research' - looking at themselves, their practice and a 'client group' of children or young people. They spend about 10 weeks developing and running the project, keeping a journal, compiling a portfolio and writing a 5000 word essay. It's one option in a two year MA at Birkbeck, University of London.
The five students are doing a wide range of things: developing cartoon strips in response to seeing 'The Red Balloon'; doing poems, nursery rhymes and songs in two very different 'drop-in' type settings; making and writing books in an after-school club; writing and compiling an online blog as a school lunchtime activity; making appliqué pictures inspired by fairy stories.
As well as planning and running the sessions with the children, they are also reading round the theory and practice of what they're doing, developing questionnaires for the children and keeping up with the journal and portfolio.
I think it's developing into one of the most exciting pieces of in-service teacher or librarian work I've ever been involved in.
