Andy Johnson here and this is a four part series four videos looking at planning and conducting action research for teacher professional development.
If you want to get a hold of me you can find me there www.teaching.reading.com. I do have some resources there so our workshop goal in these four videos is to understand what action research is, to know how to conduct action research and to be able to use action research for professional development and this is kind of an overview of the things that we will look at. So let’s start our journey here.
What is action research?
Action research is a type of research related to one’s professional practice, it could be an education or in any field. It’s practitioner resource research is a systematic process, systematic is key here, used to study a school, a classroom or a teaching-learning situation with the purpose to understand what’s going on and to improve the quality of instruction. This is action research in an educational system and it can be a powerful tool. As you’ll see, for teacher professional development it’s one of the best ways to let to link theory and research directly to classroom practice. So the basics of action research we’ll go over these seven action research descriptors and you can see them right there. This acts as kind of an advanced organizer so, let’s start with number one- action research is a systematic method used to analyze and evaluate your own teaching practice or to solve a problem systematic and orderly are the key words. Action research is a method. Action research is pre-planned upfront it is method uh it is uh it’s pretty methodical.
There is a certain amount of flexibility and how data can be collected and analyzed and presented more flexible for practitioner use, but you are not conducting an experiment in an action research. That’s a key difference and it’s often confused there. It is not whatever you think, it’s not anything goes, it’s not a description or observation of your ideas or an interesting project or unit or strategy that you use. Action research is not an explanation of something that worked really well. Action research is a systematic observation of your own teaching practice as such you do not start with the answer. Action research is an underlying assumption of any type of research you are an unbiased observer to the greatest extent possible if you had the answer you wouldn’t be doing the research in the first place.
Example of conducting action research:
Now you may think method x is the best way to do something but you do not conduct research to prove that it’s the best way. Instead you conduct action research to understand why method x might be the best way or to see if method x is effective. There’s a difference there but it should be an honest and unbiased account of what’s incurring in the classroom. If action research is unbiased to the greatest extent possible you are a more credible researcher, you are more credible if you can demonstrate that you are unbiased action research projects vary in length. They could be very short or a little bit longer but it’s determined by the question by the type of inquiry of action research and by the action research environment and the parameters of your data collection in your action research. These all vary in what is the general purpose of the research project in the first place. Now note that in general here just some general observations if you’re working with undergraduate students, if you’re a college instructor, you can do some great little action research projects. Maybe they observe two class sessions. All right that’s a very small action research project to see what’s going on there to understand. If you are a teacher you can do short action research, minimum of two weeks for data collection, that’s just a rule of thumb. A common idea an estimate for professional presentations academic journals master’s thesis or more formal formal projects think about two to nine months for data collection in general. These are just general suggestions. They’re not hard fast rules. However, keep in mind that if your data collection is too short you create an unrealistic picture or you run the risk of presenting an unrealistic view of what is occurring in that educational setting.
Action research studies are planned:
Action research studies must be adequately planned before you begin to collect the data it is a systematic inquiry, not just an impressionistic view that means you have an action research plan and a schedule for collecting data. This is in place before you begin to start. It’s what separates a systematic inquiry from an impressionistic view so it is common for your plans and data collection to change during the research. It’s common for this to change as the study progresses. There is a certain amount of flexibility in action research projects as long as you explain why things change in your report observations should be regular. They don’t have to be long; a common form of observation is one minute. You observe and you write some notes and you put those notes in a folder but the observations of action research you know some are more formal than that but observations must be consistent and pre-planned. They don’t have to be long but they do have to be consistent and have some sort of pre-planned schedule and observations are only one form of data collection. We’ll be looking at some different methods of data collection that you can use. An important one action research is grounded in theory. This is what connects the questions this is what connects action research to classroom practice so you are connecting the questions and the conclusions to existing theory and research. The context of action research and theory, this connecting, this doing a literature review helps you understand what you are seeing and this review of the literature gives you credibility; theoretical grounding lends credibility to your results. A review of the literature is an important part of action research. Now remember what I said up front, action research connects research and theory to classroom practice. It’s one of the best ways to make that direct connection. Action research is not an experimental study you’re not trying to disprove a hypothesis there’s no experimental and control groups or independent and dependent variables you are not trying to generalize to a larger population. The goal of action research is to understand what’s occurring in a particular setting. Now quantitative methods are sometimes used with caution to look at a particular situation. This does not mean that quantitative data is not collective, most often qualitative methods are used as part of this. So let’s take a look at nine steps, the steps of action research knowing that this is a recursive process, meaning that these steps don’t always progress in a linear fashion sometimes you skip steps. Sometimes steps are repeated several times or you do these steps in a different order in your action research but here are some general guidelines for the steps.
Steps for conducting action research for teacher professional development:
First step, one decides what to study in one’s action research. Ask a question, is there a problem you want to investigate, an area of interest, something you want to analyze and evaluate? What’s going on here? What’s happening in my math class? Is this effective boy? I have this problem with all, right. So it starts with deciding what to study in your action research. You ask the question- what do you want to know, what problem needs to be solved. Step- two the important one again does a review of the literature you’re examining, professional journals books and other resources. You’re seeing what others have found out or have to say about your action research topic. This helps you connect and relate your topic to existing theories. Again this lends credibility to your research, provides a theoretical context for your findings lends credibility to your research and gives you some ideas for how you might conduct your research and again you link. One of the strongest ways to link the research literature directly to classroom practice as stated this theoretical context. This grounding of action research projects in a solid theoretical context helps you also to understand what’s being observed. Now there are two approaches to doing a literature review for action research. The most common one is to review literature before collecting data. Now this might help you formulate the question or refine the pedagogical strategy or method that you are using or provide ideas for collecting data this is common. This is the most traditional however, you could also review literature as the data is being reported or collected or the conclusions are being drawn here.
The literature is related to each concluding point of your action research. You’re connecting what you are finding to the literature either way, but the important thing is to connect to the literature in some way and the onus is always on you to create a credible coherent report that’s grounded in a theoretical context. There is a certain amount of freedom in organizing this action research project and report but at the end of the day the onus is on you the researcher to create this credible coherent action research project or report or presentation. Step three- methodology make a plan for data collection. What data are you going to examine? How are these data going to be collected, how often will it be collected? You make a plan and again this plan can be flexible. It can change, that’s okay as long as you explain and describe why the changes occurred in your action research report. So the data collection, elements of data collection must be determined before the research begins begins and again action research is a systematic observation.
You should generally as a rule of thumb collect at least two kinds of data. This gives you at least two vantage points to observe, what you are about to view, what you are examining and I’ll provide you some ideas for data collection a little bit later but at least two kinds of data to collect. So you’re observing this thing from at least two different vantage points could be more than that but at least two. Step four- you begin to collect and analyze the data now it’s very common to analyze data as they are collected now if we’re using observations. We use inductive analysis to begin to look for patterns and categories see these things emerge and this initial analysis of the data often influences further data collection. It provides insight as to what sorts of things to look for you see the categories and then you begin to look for these categories. So it’s very common to begin to analyze data as they are collected in traditional quantitative studies we wait till the end to analyze data if necessary allow the question or the problem to change as the data are collected action research is dynamic ever-changing it’s common to take change teaching strategies or data sources or even the focus of the data collection if something’s not working you change it and this change is acceptable as long as the reasons for change are fully described when reporting the action research. For example- if you’re going to examine a strategy and you find that that strategy is absolutely not working or you need to change something or your data collection isn’t working it is absolutely okay to change that in your project step number six do a final analysis and organization of the data. This could be the final step in an ongoing process of action research, if the data has been analyzed and organizing as it has been collected and as i said you use inductive analysis how many total things were recorded how many categories how many in each category were collected. This is inductive analysis, you try to induce order on the field you’re looking for patterns and putting things in groups and as well if you have quantitative data that’s collected as well you make conclusions and recommendations. You interpret the data you tell what the data means but the conclusions must be based on the data. Your recommendations must be based on the data you are answering your research question or addressing the problem based on the data based on this. This is what I conclude based on the data you collect now again some action research includes a literature review at this point on all your conclusions you do a literature review that is perfectly acceptable. Step number eight is what puts the action in action research. You design a plan of action based on your conclusions and recommendations what exactly will you do or do differently, what needs to be done as a result of your research. You create this plan and then you implement your plan. The plan of action needs to be evaluated and finally you report your findings. Your findings can present be presented and I’ll show you some ideas in a written report, a scholarly report you might present at either a conference or maybe to your colleagues. If you’re doing this for teacher professional development we should expect a product or performance as a result of this and again this is a very legitimate form of teacher professional development. You are linking research in theory directly to classroom practice. All right the next video will look at types of data to collect in action research.
Various Journals for action research papers:
Various great research journals such as Global Research Letters are a great option and way to help you look up research papers to understand the process of action research for teacher professional development. With the help of which you will be able to read the papers and understand the commitment needed to do action research. Here, you will find a number of various research papers that are provided and made available to you in the journal.
You can very easily find various kinds of researches by a number of scholar practitioners recorded in a number of research papers at Global Research Letters. This will help you with your own action research for teacher professional development and understanding what research work asks of a researcher. With access to so many amazing research papers, you can practice and learn the process of action research and the commitment required to finish it correctly.