Facilitators may offer a comment, summarize a conversation, or provide a question, but their job is to discover ways in which to support the ARL teachers' work. In this way the facilitator is really conducting action research about teacher development. Classroom observations of other ARL teachers are another way to create a community of learners within a team while breaking through classroom and department isolation. It is not surprising that most teachers in a high school only visit their own section of the building. After visiting each other's classrooms, ARL teachers discover that they have a better understanding of the similarities and differences between departments as well as the structure of a student's day.
Teachers learn the process of collaborative action research by doing it.
In the throes of their projects, they raise their own questions, ones that have meaning and immediacy for them. They seek their own answers in their own classrooms with their own students. The learning is truly job-embedded because each teacher returns to a classroom ready to test out a belief. After a short while teachers cannot separate action research from their teaching. It becomes the way they teach.