Activities 251 - Beginning your Action Research
"We must become the change we want to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi
You have read about action research and you have been exploring your field of action. You will now explore what others have done before you and think about how to be a part of a community of practice that is related to your work or to the change you are about to implement and study.
In this course you will work on
1) Discussing your Logic Models
2) Examining Action Research done by others
3) Framing your Research Problem
4) Writing your Literature Review
5) Developing your Research Plan
6) Continuing your AR Journal
7) Starting Your Research Cycles
We will be putting your logic models into Voice threads and you will be both discussiing your models and sharing information on the models of your learning circle partners and any other logic model that interests you.
Post you logic model and we will add to a voice thread for discussion.
1) Describe the logic model in enough detail that we will understand it.
2) Comment on the logic models of your peers.
The goal of this activity is for you to develop your theory of action. What do you believe leads to what changes? This will be a snapshot of your thinking. You will be able to listen to this at the end of the course and see if there are any shifts in your thinking.
There are many examples of action research on the web. For example Action Research on the Net ActionResearch.net lists action research papers and other papers about action research. Use the net to find examples of written reports of action research. There are also many examples of action research from prior students at Pepperdine as well as those published in the Center for Collaborative Action Research. Educational Action Research is a fully-refereed international journal concerned with exploring the unity between educational research and practice.
Task:
Read 1 or more examples of action research (if possible chose ones similar to the one you might do). For ONE of these studies, complete the following and post in your learning circle forum.
1) Summarize the focus or problem that the action researcher is tackling in a few sentences.
2) Describe the structure of the review of literature- how are the studies arranged? What are the different sections? Does it flow well and help you understand what is known about the problem? How would you have organized the studies? (Hint: you may need to outline the lit review section. Reduce each paragraph to the main idea or topic sentence and then look at the order. It might be a chain with little overall structure or it might start with an overview and move through a well ordered set of topics or themes. You are not summarizing the content but rather decribing the way the conent is organized.
3) List the research questions. Do they make sense given the problem? Can you improve on them?
The goal of this activity is for you to develop your understanding of the beginning two sections of your action research. You will be identifying a problem, reviewing the literature and posing your research questions. So in this activity you will look to see how others have done this. You will be reading 4-5 examples in your learning circles. You are, of course willing to read in other learning circles as well but only when you are up to date with the messages in your circle.
Framing the project involves identification of a problem, a possible solution and an expected outcome. The research questions might be hard to formulate at this time so either take a stab at it or leave it them for later, but we will be getting back to them.
Let's consider some examples:
Field of Action Research: High School Classroom
Problem: student engagement in high school english learning
Possible solution: increased communication with students
Library Search Terms: Engagement, motivation, technology, communication, technology projects, student-centered learning, technology integration
Outcome: increase student engagement
Research Question: How will the use of AIM (cell phones/online office hours) in the my high school English class affect the engagement of students in class discussions?
The next step is to define how this communication tool would be used (the action) and then to determine how to measure engagement of students in class discussions so that a change could be validated.
Here are some cycle questions that could evolve from this first question (action in gold and data to be collected is in green):
Field of Action Research: Teacher Community at School
Possible solution: increase access to "just in time" learning resources and incentives for innovative uses of computers in the classroom.
Library Search Terms: Professional development, technology integration, just-in-time learning, professional training, technology instruction tutorials, teacher incentives, learning communities,
Research Question: How will access to "just-in-time" tutorials and performance incentives affect the level of implementation of technology in classrooms?
The next step is to figure out how to make which resources available to teachers. This could mean developing, finding, or buying, or organizing the resources. The second issues is to determine what would serve as an inventive. And finally there has to be some plan in place in assess the level of implementation of technology in the classroom.
Here are some cycle questions that might flow from this first formulation:
If I provide teachers the opportunity to be selected to offer (paid) presentations at a technology fair, how will this incentive affect the liklihood of teachers to experiment with technology?
If I involve local teachers as experts in the development of online tutorials, how will this effect the diffusion of new ideas through the school?
Problem: Under utilization of technology for instruction in the school
Field of Action Research: Office working as part of a larger company
Problem: Poor communication, decisions are made without attending to the issues of how this decision affects other parts of the system.
Possible solution: Create a database for storing and sharing documents
Library Search Terms: Knowledge management, knowledge building communities, community of practice, learning organizations, data management, data-driven decision making
Research Question: How will the creation of a common location for files and notes affect the communication among teams working in different regions?
The next step is to define what kind of communication tool will be used and how to measure the amount of communication across teams.
Cycle questions that might evolve from this research:
If I create discussion forums with good search options, will this provide a way to increase the sharing of ideas among teams doing similar work but geographically divided?
If I promote the use of AIM chat/WIKI rather than email, will this change the type of work that is to extend face-to-face meetings?
**** These are some questions to help you******
1) What questions arise out of my experience to which I would like to search for answers?
2) What might be the answers to these questions?
3) What do I think might be the underlying causes of the situation for which I have these questions?
4) What alternative answer might exist
5) Where do I fit into the situation as defined by the questions?
6) What opposition will I encounter?
7) Where are the sensitive issues?
8) What are the constraints?
9) Who needs to be involved?
10) Who needs to be involved? Whose support do I enlist?
11) Where would be a good place to begin?
12) How will I engage in uncovering the data?
A literature review is a creative way of organizing what has been written about a topic by scholars and researchers. You will find literature reviews at the beginning of many essays, research report, or thesis. To write the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what you have learned through a careful reading of a set of articles related to your research question. The literature review should be organized around a small set of concepts, themes, critical dimensions, debates that are related to your research objective, the problem or issue you are exploring,. It is NOT just a descriptive list of a set of studies, or a set of summaries of papers arranged without structure. It is NOT an annotated bibliography.
A strong literature review has the following properties:
We will be collecting papers in the resource section of the action research course. This way the library will grow for students in the future. You will see some of the papers that were added by cadre 13.
ADVICE ON WRITING YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW
(Please follow this link and read carefully!)
You will be working to create your action research plan
Here is a template. You are free to deviate from it in ways that help you better explain your project.
PURPOSE: The purpose of my Action Research is.... (a phrase).
PROBLEM/SITUATION: The problem that I want to solve.... or the situation that I want to improve is....(a paragraph description).
RESEARCH QUESTION: My possible research question is....(a sentence).
BACKGROUND RESEARCH: The resources that have helped me the most are....(a list). What I have learned about this endeavor from these resources includes.... (a paragraph).
Community of Practice: My membership/position in the community of practice that I am working in can be described in the following way....(a paragraph).
MY ACTIONS (Cycle 1) : The research question is ....
The first actions that I will be taking soon (or have already taken) is/are....(a paragraph description).
ARTIFACTS COLLECTED: I will be collecting the following... (a list).
EVALUATION: I will evaluate the outcomes of this action by.....(your plans for analysis in a paragraph or two).
PLAN (Cycle 2): While the outcomes and my reflections on them my change my plans dramatically, my current thoughts on my second cycle of action are....
This should be followed by your best guess at a timeline of events. You will need to revisit the timeline but you need to finish by June so working backwards and keeping track of time is important. We will be updating the timelines. I wonder if you might each use the google calendar and then share the calendar with your learning circle and cadre advisor. This is just an idea.
During the second trimester, you will be reflecting on the process and organizing all of your notes and works into plan for your action research.
Through out the program you will be refining your personal theory of learning and teaching. Your Action Research journal is a good place to reflect on this process and collect the things that you learn in other classes that you will want to use in your final report. The more regularly you write in your journal, the more written work you will have to pull from when you are ready to write your final report. You should be in the practice of making weekly entries. We hope to add private blogs in the blackboard environment which should make this more private.
There will be some description of things that are happening that you want to keep track of. You might list the date and then record events, for example:
or other things that you might forget if you don't note.
You might use some other tool to make:
You might also take pictures and use the pictures from reflection.
Then you might also reflect on
(October-December)
What counts as a cycle will be different for each of you. They are not likely to be of equal duration or intensity. Your first action might only last a few days or a week and the second could be 3 months. Or the inverse is also possible. There is no need for each of your actions to be of equal duration. The point is to experiment with your actions, learn from your research and apply what you have learned to achieve a progressively better outcome. Sometimes you will find that you need to take a step backwards or sideways to learn how to move forward. Many of you will be ready to start your first cycle during this period. a few will not get started until January. It will depend on you situation.
When is it a new cycles? This is a difficult questions for students. The best guide to the beginning of a new cycle is when, through a process of thinking back on what you are doing, you decide to make a change and you want to know if that change is making a difference.