Action Research--Week 2

This week I found it very helpful to listen to the educational leaders whose videos were in our video lectures. Their experience with action research and their tips to those of us who are making efforts to move into areas of leadership as well are things that can help us grow in our practice. The readings this week were helpful to inform the decisions being made about specific action research topics for us to study. I took this information with me to my meeting with my site supervisor. We looked at multiple possibilities for my action research project together. We discussed each in turn before making our decision on which idea I would move forward with. We looked at the ideas of how the use of technology (such as the use of interactive white boards) aids the motivation of students in the classroom, how the training of teachers on the development of personal web pages can effect the quality of those pages and how well they are maintained throughout the school year, and we looked at how effective our school's mentorship program can be because of special demographic of emotionally and behaviorally disturbed students. After looking at all of these, we decided that I would use the last of these for my action research project. There is a lot less existing research on this topic, so we are looking forward to the results of this study. This makes it challenging in one way, but I also believe it makes it a very helpful and rewarding topic to research and study as well.