I am currently an educational consultant, having retired in 2007 as Superintendent of Education for the Grand Erie District School Board, Brantford. My experience as a professional educator for 40 years includes a variety of positions including secondary school teacher and department head, union president and governor, coordinator, principal, superintendent and university teacher. After 6 years of part-time study at the University of Bath, U.K., I completed my doctorate in educational action research in 2002 with Jack Whitehead. My thesis: “How can I improve my practice as a superintendent of schools and create my own living educational theory?” is available on our website: http://www.actionresearch.ca and on Jack Whitehead’s http://www.actionresearch.net.
As superintendent, I created a culture of inquiry and reflection where teachers and administrators researched their practice by asking questions like ‘How can I be a better educator for these children?’ The evidence is contained in the eight volumes of Passion in Professional Practice which contain the practitioner research produced over 13 years and available on the above websites and in a guidebook, Action Research For Teaching Excellence (Delong, Black & Wideman, 2005). This culture of inquiry was built using the living theory methodology for bringing the embodied knowledge of practitioner-researchers for informal professional development and for accreditation as academic knowledge. Through eight volumes practitioner research and three Brock University Masters’ cohort groups, the meanings of the embodied values that educational researchers use to explain their educational influences in their own learning and in the learning of others, is evident.
My current research is a self study in which I study my practice in creating a culture of inquiry, an aboriginal context for a First Nation Masters’ group and a space for creative and performance arts representations for bringing non-Indigenous and Indigenous knowledges into the Academy.
In my personal life, I am married to Bill Weir, mother to two children, two step-children and grandmother to three grandsons. I am an active sailor - last sail was from Nazare, Portugal to Smir, Morocco-, curler, golfer and gardener.
