Action research is something that I think is (at least for me) fairly intuitive. When you look at your instruction in light of your student's learning, you want to constantly be improving. When you notice a challenge for you, your students, or both, it is natural to want to look at ways to make things better. It makes sense to start by posing a question, so that you know where to begin. After doing this, it is helpful to me to follow the next step of action research, which is to look at research done by others on the topic you are trying to address in your classroom. After doing this the "true" action research begins. You look at your instructional methods in a particular area, whether it be content, behavior, classroom management, classroom arrangement, et al, and see the effects of those methods on the learning of students. After gathering this data through journaling or other methods of data collection, you the analyze the data you have gathered. What worked better? What should be discontinued? What do other teachers do in a similar situation? After analyzing the data, you then are ready to make decisions and plans based on what you learned. The goal end result of action research is a change in educational practice. This change is based on the analysis of data performed by the teacher after the data collection is complete. This can be done alone or in collaboration with others, even up to an entire campus looking at campus-wide improvement. The benefits of actions research are many. They include improved instruction, increased student learning, improved relationships among faculty members after staff collaboration, among other benefits that stem from action research.
Educational leaders can use blogs in order to do many different things. They can use their blog to communicate to different groups, including parents, students, the community, and their faculty and staff. They can use their blog to discuss challenges, sharing ideas for solutions as well as asking others to respond with new ideas for solutions. An educational leader can use their blog for motivating. This could be used to benefit students or to benefit teachers on their campuses.
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Your comment about teachers wanting to improve got me thinking. Many teachers want to improve but don't know how. I think the one thing a lot of us hasn't mentioned is training. It's important that administrators and teachers receive professional development and ongoing support in their efforts to use action research as an improvement tool.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to see we're on the same page regarding action research and its definition. The only thing I could add is during the final phase - make sure you share your results so others will be able to use them in their own action research projects! You also make good observations about the many uses of blogging.
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