This week I have learned a great deal about action research. I have learned the difference between action research and "traditional research". I have also learned the benefits of action research to the person doing the research and all stakeholders. I also learned the different places that action research occurs in an educational setting.
All of the reading that I did this week lessened my anxiety level about doing the action research. I had a real fear of doing this project because it has been such a long time since I had done a research paper. However, after doing the readings, I learned that I have already been doing action research at my campus. I already know some of the steps in the process and I have seen some real benefits from the process. I have been involved in the leadership team at the district level and at the campus level in my school district. We have looked at data about TAKS scores and have used the data to define our greatest area of need. We found that math was an issue at our school. We then looked at our TEKS and decided which TEKS the students were struggling with based on the disaggregation of test data. Using that data we found several areas that need improvement. We decided to focus on problem solving skills in math first. We looked at best practices and chose a strategy to teach school wide that would help our students whenever they are faced with a problem solving situation. We modeled and practiced, and have the students practice using the strategy that we found. We then looked at our test data the following year to see how successful the strategy was in meeting our need. We then decided to continue teaching the problem solving strategy as well as deciding to add another strategy to our repertoire in order to address another TEK that the students were struggling with on the TAKS test.
I think my going through this process already has helped me to better understand the process of action research. I found many benefits of this process and have real life experience going through each stage of the process.
Now I am not as stressed about going through the class I feel like I can breathe a little easier because I have some experience in doing action research. I also have seen the benefits of this process so I know from trial and error some things that were done that worked and some things that did not work so well at our campus.
I plan on using this action research in the area of literacy. I haven't decided if I want to do research on reaching the emergent readers and making sure that they have the basic skills needed for learning to read or if I want to address teaching the English language learners. I plan on looking at data from assessments that the students have been given as well as future assessments. I will look at the data in order to devise a plan of attack on an area of need. I will then use published data to find best practices and have the teachers implement these best practices. Once I have done this I will monitor the effectiveness of the strategies introduced and look at future assessments in order to see how the best practices introduced can be altered to improve instruction even more.
Educational leaders might use action research as my campus did in order to improve an area of the school that concerns them. This could be an achievement area where the students are struggling or an area that is a conflict between different groups involved with the school. I could see this as a positive way to make decisions that are informed and very beneficial to the campus. I think that by using action research the administrators can make better informed decisions because it takes into account situations unique to the school the administrator is in charge of leading.