9417 - Action Research
UMC Course Description
Study of concepts associated with action research; and the processes and procedures for conducting action research. Culminating project is the development of an action research project. The focus of the course is on the concepts, processes, and procedures for conducting action research.
Personal Reflection
Action research is a mechanism to monitor the impact of a variable on a system without manipulating the environment. This enables a different set of conclusions from using scientific research, which attempts to regulate all the variables in a system using controls to identify the impact of an independent variable. Action research offers ability in education settings for teachers to monitor and assess the effectiveness of a new strategy or tool on student outcomes.
The course discussions and assignments highlighted the different components of the action research process using Geoffrey E. Mills 2003 text: Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher.
The process begins by observing the current perceptions influencing a particular subject area. For this process, we evaluated the perceptions about school that students would receive by watching a movie. (Movie Analysis) Mass media such as movies invokes reactions and stereotypes different aspects of education that influence a student’s and teacher’s behavior. (Movie Analysis)
The second phase of the process includes identification of a particular need or activity with an application but undocumented results within a particular system. It is not necessarily true that an activity that produces positive results in one classroom scenario will yield the same result in another. Within my science classrooms, students enjoy the lab experiences yet they struggle with the lab reports and extrapolation of concepts to achieve the higher level learning that is expected. I have proposed using podcasts to assist with that process by offering an opportunity to revisit the lab after the hands-on investigation is concluded.
The third phase involved identification of background research that has been previously studied on the chosen area. Then the fourth step is to use the prior research and proposed idea to propose data that answers the questions being studied. It is important to examine what others have done and incorporate that knowledge base into your work to enhance the chances for successful outcomes. It also provides insight into data points that will provide valuable information for assessing the validity of a particular finding. (Literature Matrix) (Data Matrix)
The fifth component of the process is to examine how the data will be analyzed. Once the process has begun and data is being collected there needs to be an objective means to assess what has been observed. This highlights bias as another factor that was looked at in the course. A particular interest in seeing a project succeed should not be allowed to influence the outcomes. (Data Analysis Matrix)
Ultimately all of these steps combine to produce an action research plan that can be implemented. The time constraints of the summer course did not allow me to actually complete my action research project during the course. During the next trimester at school, I began to initiate the process and found that the creation of the podcasts themselves encompassed more time than was feasible. This delayed the start of the project, but it did provide information that was not considered correctly in the development. The project will begin again with a completion for the third trimester of classes. To alleviate some of the time constraints on developing the podcasts, students with and interest in technology are being included more in their production. (Podcasts Action Research Project)
