Reflection

Action Research has turned out to be very interesting to me.  I was actually doing it in my classroom all along.  I would identify an area of need and would go research what I could do on google or go buy a book at Barnes and Noble about the problem. Then I would go and try out the ideas and apply it in my classroom.  If it worked it would become part of my teaching strategies forever and I would share with my grade level.  If it did not work, I would go back to the drawing board.

I also learned a lot with the interviews that were presented this week in our class.

I learned that you should research or google other people’s research to see if it applies to your own situation so that you gain time to do other research.  You should also do research that means something to your students, class and school or else you will lose interest and it will not benefit your students. Make it practical and use the data that you have to answer the questions that you are wondering.  All of the interviewees spoke about data and that is really where all things are going, what the data is telling you and what can your action research help the students succeed.

Teachers engaging in sharing ideas

I also really loved the idea of having staff meeting to share ideas and to also share  problems to help out the teachers.

Why Blog?

Why should educational leaders blog?

There are many reasons to blog, such as getting your ideas out there to share with others.  It is a tool that can be dynamic, ongoing, and interactive.  People can read your ideas and provide feedback and comments and really interactions with those that have to same interests.

So educational leaders might use the blog to organize their ideas and have others comment so that those leaders can get different perspectives from others.  They can also them as a school blog.

They can have a blog only for their teachers where teachers can read the leaders thoughts and questions and ideas.  The teachers then can provide feedback and comments and make it a good communication tool where there is always a conversation about issues going on in school.  That conversation can them bring up questions that can be made into Action Research projects for the school.

What is Action Research?

Action research is a way to pose a question or a wondering in your school(or business) and make a systematic study of question and then taking action based on results.  It is a way to collect data and then make changes needed in the school based on the findings.  Action research is a great way to improve the school and a way to focus on concerns or problems of the school.  This kind of research is carried out within the context of the school's environment with questions that deal with that school.  It is an on-going process of posing questions, gathering data, reflecting and deciding on a course of action.  Then the principal or teachers can then go on to pose other questions that need to be addressed.  It is essentially asking "How can I improve my school?"

Action research is not a research paper like we did in high school where you read lots of articles and then summarize what you read.  It is much deeper and systematic.  It is not about why we do things but how we can make things better.

An action research inquiry can be done by one person or preferably a group of people that want to improve the school.

I came across this graphic on the internet on  http://www.web.net/robrien/papers/arfinal.html#_Toc26184651

and I really liked how they made the model of the cyclical nature of action research:

Dan MacIsaac, "An Introduction to Action Research," 1995, http://www.phy.nau.edu/~danmac/actionrsch.html (22/03/1998).

Dana, N.F.(2009).  Leading with passion and knowledge:  The principal as action researcher.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Corwin Press.