Abstract

The method of teacher-as-researcher, or action research, was adopted to explore issues related to journal work with adolescents. A teaching project was created and taught to three grade nine English language arts classes. The first class was a pilot project and had specific goals of subject integration. Observations were made during the course of the pilot project that promoted further investigation. The journal project was then repeated with two other grade nine classes with a new set of goals. Specifically, how could the act of keeping a journal become more personally relevant to teenagers? Could they transform the self-exploration done in their journals into personal, visual imagery? In what ways would they do so? Would these high school students be able to make the connection between what they had expressed on the pages of their journals and their creative production? Would their journals become a tool of self-discovery? A description of the teaching project and examples of the students' work, which are included in this study, respond to the questions posed above. For example, details of the project's first lesson reveal the students' negative response toward journals and my attempts to redefine journal work for them in order to make it more personally relevant. During this discussion, students' and the teacher's preconceived notions regarding past classroom experiences with journals are revealed. Of particular interest are concerns related to student motivation, freedom of expression, censorship and teacher evaluation. These issues are reflected upon and conclusions are made using concrete examples from this teaching project.