Sample Activity

Implications of NCSALL Research for Program Administrators

5. Program Administrators' Sourcebook—A Jigsaw (70 minutes)

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• Explain to participants that NCSALL’s research yielded new information about both teachers and students that might help them address the “Areas for Improvement” that they posted on the newsprint. Point out that in their roles as administrators, they probably have responsibilities for both teachers and students.
• Explain to participants that in this activity they will use the Program Administrators’ Sourcebook—which is a summary of NCSALL’s research about teachers and students—to begin to build evidence-based practices and to encourage them to be reflective practitioners.

Explain to the whole group that NCSALL worked with administrators in the field to develop this book, drawing on their professional wisdom and putting it together with the research findings.  Those practitioners read NCSALL’s research and listed both the researchers’ and their own implications for policy or practice.  Then they generated specific strategies from those implications.

• Distribute the handout Jigsaw Questions.
• Ask participants to form groups by their interest in the named clusters of problems or issues from the previous step.  You may want to make table tents with those names on them during break. 
• Post the newsprint Program Administrators’ Sourcebook. Explain to participants that the Sourcebook is organized around the four sections listed.

Program Administrators Sourcebook

1. Teaching and Learning

2. Adult Student Persistence

3. Professional Development

4. Outcomes of Participating in Adult Education

• Ask participants to take 15 minutes to work in small groups to research the problem/issue they face by looking at the appropriate section of the handbook and using the questions on the handout as a guide. 

• What do you see as the key research finding(s) to address the problem/issue?
• Which implication(s) do you see as most important?
• Which of the strategies did you find interesting or intriguing? Why?
• What are ways you can use the research to improve your programs and/or help your teachers/tutors provide better instruction?
• How might you help your teachers/tutors access, understand, judge, and use research?
  
  
• Reconvene the whole group and invite the small groups to provide a brief summary of their discussions for the other participants.
• Encourage participants to ask clarifying questions, and consider how they might use the information.
• Remind participants that the Program Administrators’ Sourcebook is only one tool for accessing research; it is limited to the research conducted by NCSALL, and other organizations have conducted and published research reports as well.  NCSALL also publishes other tools, such as Focus on Basics, study circle and seminar guides, teaching materials, and reports.