Archived Posts from Officers

Hi AERA AR SIG members,

Our website is open for posting conferences, promoting journals, or announcing new resources. We want to hear from you!

I just announced Pepperdine's 5th Annual Action Research with Technology Conference on the website. I know that most of you will not be close enough to come to Pepperdine on June 18th and 19th, but we welcome all of you to join us through the webcasting link. You can find more information about it and the schedule here: http://mindmaps.wikispaces.com/Cadre15+AR+Conference

If you have any questions about how to post things on the website (or the conference), I am happy to help you.

Margaret Riel (AR SIG webmaster)

July 18, 2013

Greetings. We are down to final countdown for AERA 2014 presentation proposals. There is still time to make the July 22 deadline but only if you get on it NOW. We welcome a full range of proposals from the diverse corners of the action research global community. What we do ask is that proposals be fully grounded in action research. While research on action research is certainly appropriate, this year we hope to balance the number of presentations about action research with presentations based on actual action research conducted in the field.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions. While the circumstances discussed in the June 3 entry by the AR SIG Chair did slow us down this year, we now are up and running and looking forward to a strong pool of submissions for AERA 2014.

I also want to thank all who have volunteered for chairs, discussants, and proposal reviewers. We now have an excellent team taking shape for this year's program.

Warm Regards,

Lonnie Rowell, Ph.D., Program Chair, AR SIG

June 3, 2013

Hi, action researchers,

Elections for Chair, Program Chair and Secretary/Treasurer. NOW! SPECIAL ELECTION!!

Nominations for officers due to Dannelle by June 14. Self-nominations are just fine.

We need two people for each office.

We need a short bio from each candidate to inform the electorate.

Due to my oversight, we did not hold elections for chair, program chair or secretary/treasurer last fall. The chair is the one who is supposed to initiate this.

We did set up a Nominations Committee at AERA this April to assist the chair in getting in nominations for next year. However, we still need to have a special election in June to seat candidates for program chair, chair and secretary/treasurer beginning in the summer this year.

We will have an election this summer and again in November for 2014-2015. By our by-laws, currently our officers serve for only one year. We need to have an election every year. The Nominations Committee did suggest some changes. We are seeking a way to have old officers inform new ones and new ones have some time to get up to speed.

We are now accepting self-nominations and nominations for each position. AERA requires us to have two people for EACH position in the election. That is why we need a nominations committee.

Currently we have one person for each position but we need at least one more for each position. Do self-nominate.

Email to me and I will pass it onto AERA on June 15 for the special election...

Thank you.

Dannelle Stevens, current AR chair

April 23, 2013

Hi, action researchers,

Just a few quick announcements before the conference starts!

I have attached a new version of the downloadable AR sessions information. It is much more user friendly.. and ends up on two back-to-back pieces of paper when printed. My tech students tell me AERA has a wonderful APP too that works well to schedule what you want to do when at AERA. Check that out!

Thanks to the work of Lonnie Rowell and Margaret Riel and many others, we have some new events at the AERA conference but also in San Francisco itself.

The first conference of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) just after AERA, May 1 & 2 in San Francisco... go to this link...

https://sites.google.com/site/arnaconnect/arna---2013-conf

The second item is our website for action research SIG which Margaret dutifully takes care of... She has found several other sessions besides the AR sessions that might of interest and has described them on this site.

https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig

See you all soon!

March 18, 2013

Dannelle Stevens

Hi, folks, members of the Action Research SIG of AERA,

The Executive Committee of the AR SIG welcomes you the the Annual AERA

meeting in San Francisco, April 26 to May 1. We are particularly excited

this year to have some new venues and opportunities to work together as a

community as well as share our ideas.

We will be sending out as an attachment materials that will put all of our

sessions in one place. People found those handy last year and we will do it

again!

On *Sunday the 28th*, keep your calendars open for an AR SIG business

meeting, at 4:05 (Hyatt Grand Ballroom West) and a community meeting at

6:30 (Hyatt, Grand Ballroom East)! Both will have refreshments but the

second one will have a cash bar. We expect about 50-60 to the Business

Meeting and maybe 200 to the Community Meeting. We have Lonnie Rowell, our

excellent Program Chair this year, to thank for creating these

opportunities.

*4:05 Business Meeting (Hyatt Grand Ballroom West),* more of the nuts and

bolts of the SIG operations. Expenses, Committees, etc.. We will form and

have meetings for subcommittees that we have been trying to launch for

several years (Dissertation Awards, Travel Grants, etc.). If you want to

help us with the year-to-year operations, this meeting is for you. Also,

we will talk about the By-laws and elections for next year. Refreshments.

Bring a friend to join the SIG!

*6:30-9:00 Community Meeting (Hyatt Grand Ballroom East)*, we expect a

larger number of people to come to this because we will have our SF

community partners and representatives from the new ARNA (Action Research

Network of the Americas). In addition, there will be posters from

community groups about all the projects going on in the Bay Area.

Refreshments. Cash bar.

More information on SIG activities, well-organized on our website

https://sites.google.com/site/aerasig/Home/aera2013

Thank you, Margaret Riel

Plus the site for the newly created Action Research Network of the Americas

Conference in SF on May 1 & 2 at;

https://sites.google.com/site/arnaconnect/arna---2013-conf

Thank you, Lonnie, Margaret and others for this.

See you at AERA!

Dannelle D. Stevens, Chair

An American Educational Research Association List

If you need assistance with this list, please send an email to listadmin@aera.net.

March 14, 2013

HI Action Researchers,

This is a note from your webmaster... We have posted information on the site for your Action Research Experience at AERA.

https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/Home/aera2013

It includes the exciting activities that the Action Research SIG is sponsoring and a schedule that you can print and take with you with all of the sessions.

We hope that all of you will join us for the Action Research Community Reception and Recognition (6:30-9:00) that follows our Business Meeting (6:15-8:45) on Sunday April 28.

Come eat and drink with people you will want to know. We would love to see all of you at BOTH sessios.

Action Research is a way of life and we want to take this time to celebrate the learning that is the valued outcome of this activity.

Looking forward to connecting with friends and making new ones!

Warmly,

Margaret

January 31, 2013

Dannelle Stevens

Dear Action Research SIG members,

A new year is upon us! We are all looking forward to AERA in San

Francisco from April 27 to May 1. Lonnie Rowell, our Program Chair,

has created a wonderful new program for the SIG at AERA. It includes

off-site visits and some special sessions with action researchers in

the San Francisco Bay Area. We will be adding more details in the

next two weeks!

Announcing the ACTION RESEARCH NETWORK FOR THE AMERICAS (ARNA). As you

think about buying your tickets and making reservations, you may want

to stay on extra day to participate in the first ARNA conference.

Many people who are active in the SIG contributed to the design of

this new action research network. This network will have its first

conference following AERA on May 1 & 2 at the historic Fort Mason in

San Francisco. There is a call for papers and more information about

the group on the link below.

http://sites.google.com/site/arnaconnect/

What a wonderful idea to connect and sustain our action research work

across the Americas! We hope to see you at both conferences! AERA

(April 27 to May 1) and the ARNA (May 1 & 2)!

Best wishes,

Dannelle D. Stevens, Chair

Action Research SIG

An American Educational Research Association List

If you need assistance with this list, please send an email to listadmin@aera.net.

October 10, 2012

Hi Action Researchers,

Welcome to the 2012-2013 School Year!

It is likely that you are back at school now or returning soon and many of you will either be engaged in ongoing action research or will be supporting a new group of action researchers. We hope that you will join with us as a larger community as you engage in this process.

We want to welcome you to the AERA SIG Action Research Website. https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/

When you visit the site, you might notice that you have to be a member to interact on the site. This is simply, just send the email that you want to use to interact with the site to Margaret Riel -- mriel@pepperdine.edu -- and she will add your email to the list of members. Then when you sign in, you will be able to edit all pages and start a conversation at the bottom of any page. (There is tech help if you are not seeing the editing options)

You might begin by :

1) going to members and adding your information.

2) You might want to look at the Action Research World Map. If you don't see your favorite action research

web resource listed, contact Derrel Fincher (darrel@fincher.com), our communication chiar,

It would be great to have the globe covered with markers.

3) Also you are welcome to use this site as a place to keep your information about your action research activities.

You are welcome to create your entry in the Action Research World.

4) We have a listing of conferences, journals and books... feel free to add.

5) We have started a place to share your course syllabi so that we might learn from how we teach. Please feel free to add yours.

6) If you presented at the AERA Conference as a member of the AR SIG last year, there is a place to post your papers.

7) If you happen to know more about the history of our SIG please update the history page.

Soon we will be beginning the process of planning for 2013 AERA Conference. If you submitted a paper, you will be finding out if it was accepted soon.

All the best,

Margaret Riel, SIG Webmaster

May 3, 2012

Dear Action Researchers,

This is a transitional message from your now -past chair- of the Action Research SIG at AERA. I want to report to those who did not attend the conference in Vancouver that we had a very good time and there is a strong sense of community growing -- both in numbers and spirit. The sessions were all excellent, and credit and thanks go both to all of the presenters for the time and care that they devoted to finding the best ways to share their ideas and to our Program Chair, Dannelle Stevens and her many, hardworking reviewers for selecting them. These are the jobs that improve the quality of what we share with others about action research.

AERA:

The community/business meeting was well attended (about 50 people) and we began with reports for all of the officers. Our attendance is growing and with it, our funds to promote action research around the world. Our website is developing (I am pleased to announce that I have been appointed by the board to serve as your webmaster). Derrel Fincher continues as the Communication Officer and in that role he will help you stay connected to the discussion forum and he is keeper of the AR(our) World Map. If you are doing action research and sharing resources on your website, please write to him (Derrel@fincher.com) to have your website connected. Also we are encouraging you to put AR (our) World map on your site and link back to theSIG. (You can see an example of this at the Center for Collaborative Action Research. Derrel has volunteered to help you put the embedded code for the map on your page. This way every time a new location is pinned, it will appeared on all of the linked AR World websites.

After reports from the officers, we had a community activity lead by Lonnie Rowell with help from Elena Polush and myself. The purpose of the activity was to help our SIG discover how we overlap or differ in the ways we define action research. We are working towards a page on our website that will be developed by all of us. We have engaged past leaders of the AR SIG and authors of books on action research to participate in a DELPHI process organized by Elana to help find the overlap and the places of disagreement in the ways we think about action research. We opened the process to the SIG community (and we hope to soon provide a way for you to participate online). We used a modification of the learning circle model to have everyone lead small group discussions around a statement that they selected from the list generated by the Delphi process. The discussions were rich and meaningful.

While I had intended to bring my camera and take pictures, I am afraid I did not pack my "photographer's identity" with me. I did take a few pictures (iphone) and I have added them to a public album. Feel free to add more pictures-- I know that lots of you did have cameras. Please feel free to tag and add (or delete) pictures that are there and add your comments. I will be adding a section with links from our AERA website soon but you can find the album here:

http://tinyurl.com/aera2012pics

Officers:

We are following a SIG tradition by electing our program chair to be SIG Chair. Dannelle Stevens has been a terrific program chair going well beyond what is expected. Those of you who were presenters know that she not only worked hard at selecting the sessions but tried to attend everyone of them taking careful notes. She also noted that in our presentations, their is a tendency to cite books about action research more than research studies and she brings this observation to us as a community to reflect on. I know that she will be a great chair. We also thank our outgoing officers for their work, Carrie Rogers has done a great job of running our elections each year, and Deniz Palak has served as our secretary treasurer helping us manage so well. As Dannelle takes over as the Chair, her work will be be made easier by the group of leaders who care deeply about the action research community.

Our newly elected officers are:

• • • Dannelle Stevens -- AR SIG Chair Portland State University, stevensd@pdx.edu

    • Lonnie Rowell - AR SIG Program Chair <lrowell@sandiego.edu>

    • Barbara Kawulich - Sec/Treasurer (bkawulic@westga.edu)

Appointed Officers

• • • Derrel Fincher Communication Officer (Derrel@fincher.com)

    • Margaret Riel - Webmaster (mriel@pepperdine.edu)

Committee Work (Still taking Volunteers)

And finally we are thinking of putting on a preconference workshop on action research. We have formed a small committee of people who want to work on this: Wendy Troxel, Josesph Shosh, Rick Vanosdall, Omar Esau, and Joyce Pittman. Micki Caskey volunteered to work on a committee to give an award for action research submitted by a graduate student. And we are planning to have a Community Connection event off site in San Francisco and Norm Vaughan and Shannon Pella have volunteered to work on this event. If any of you want to help, please feel free to add your name. I will be opening a space for volunteering and working on these committees on our website.

So I end with my heartfull welcome of Dannelle to the role of SIG CHAIR, (sounds of enthusiastic applause for our new leader!)

Margaret Riel

Past Chair of the AERA AR SIG

SIG Website: sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig

April 15, 2012

Hi all,

A number of you, who were not able to attend the AERA Conference, have asked if you could attend the session from your locations virtually. We are working to make this happen. We are planning to open an elluminate space (now called BlackBoard Collaborate). Here is the link...

http://tinyurl.com/ar-sig-2012

(If it is called "Virtual Office - Margaret Riel GSEP), ignore the name...I am working to get it changed to action research but it might not happen.)

If this is your first time using elluminate on your computer, you may want to log in before the meeting time as you might need to download the application. We will try to have someone to greet you about 30 minutes before the meeting time.

The meeting is Monday night, 6:15pm (pt)

If you come, you will be able to participate in a process of creating a shared definition of action research for the SIG. We would love to have you join us. We would also share the refreshments with you... but virtual food is not all the tasty. But we will do our best to make you feel a part of the process.

(We will also post this on the sig web page... )

Margaret

Chair, AR SIG

March 29, 2012

Hi Action Researchers,

I know that a number of you are planning to join us in

Vancouver, Canada in a few weeks for the Annual Meetings of AERA.

Please visit our site and for a list of AR sessions and plans...

https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/aera2012

I hope you have added our community meeting to your calendars:

ACTION RESEARCH SIG COMMUNITY/BUSINESS MEETING:

TOWARD DEFINING A PARADIGM

Monday, April 16th 6:15- 7:45

Marriott Pinnacle, Fourth Level -Ambleside

We want all of you who can come to the meetings to join us.

We will have good food, refreshing, and comforting drink and

the time to engage as a community to help define

and refine our assumptions about action research.

We need you, all of you, your thoughtful ideas, as well as

your willingness to contribute both at the meeting and in the future.

Action research is collaborative and participatory!

So please don't miss the community meeting.... we are

looking forward to renewing connections and making new

ones.

Margaret Riel

Chair AR SIG

March 9, 2012

Hi Action Researchers,

The meetings are fast approaching. Congratulations to our new officers! They will take over the new leadership at the close of the Community Meeting.

Danelle Stevins -- New SIG Chair

Lonnie Rowell -- New Program Chair

Barbara Kawulich -- New Secretary/ Treasurer

To our members: If you want to be join the leadership team, we have a number of appointed roles and will be looking for volunteers at the meetings. So come to our community meetings and get involved. We need you!

To our presenters, I hope that your writing is going well-- thanks for taking the time and effort to share your work and ideas with us.

AERA Action Research SIG Sessions - April 2012

Here is your listing of the sessions. Print this page and take it with you. The session on "To Know is not Enough" on Saturday addresses the conference theme and makes the intellectual case for action research as the core research methodology for an applied field like education. And Defining Research through different lenses also focuses on the role of action research. Share this message with your colleagues in other SIGS or Divisions that might be interested in knowing more about action research.

If you search on the SIG you can get this listing on the AERA program site and the names will link to more information about each of the sessions. And if you link to our website you can see a printable version of this table is it does come through the listserv in good condition.

Our community meeting takes place on Monday night (6:15-7:45) and we hope to see you all there. We will be ordering lots of food and drink so that you can socialize with your action research buddies.

October 26, 2011

Subject: AERA AR SIG -- Update

Hi AR SIG,

Elections are coming soon -- and please do go to our AERA

AR<https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/nominations-elections>site

to

learn more about who will be leading our SIG in the future.

AERA 2012

The date for AERA Conference are April 13-17th. Now is a good

time to mark your Calendar. The decisions on paper submission

will be starting on Nov.1 You can track these on the AERA

site<http://www.aera.net/2012AnnualMeeting.htm>

.

AERA Conference is in the Vancouver Convention &

<http://goog_1340078055>

Exhibition Centre <http://www.vancouverconventioncenter.net/>, British

Columbia, Canada

The hotel list is going to open mid-December. It is important

to watch as room are reserved quickly and hotels rooms can be

harder to get once everyone makes their reservations.

I plan to check hotels now as room reservations can be cancelled

if there are better conference rates.

SHORTS from our Website <https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig>

USD has an open call for

paper<https://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/Home/Posts-By-Members/9tha

nnualactionresearchconferenceatusd>s

for their 9th Annual Action Research Conference to be held April 27th and 28th in San Diego.

The ending date for submission of papers is Nov. 14th. This

conference is a good venue for both student and faculty

presentations.

Ethical Issues and IRB

In the last message I including information about ethical issues and

IRB -- I give a link to a poll

<http://ccar.wikispaces.com/Ethical+Issues>and

here is the result. We had 23

respondents and these are the results. (If they are do not

show here (this listserv does not like graphics) then you

can link to the site and while you are there, you can add

your response.

Total Votes: 23

8.7%

*Ethical issues for action research are handle *

*outside of the formal university IRB process.*

------------------------------

8.7%

*There is a special process for IRB review of *

*action research*

------------------------------

78.3%

*Action researchers submit once for IRB approval *

*in the same way as for other forms of research*

------------------------------

4.3%

*Action Researchers need to submit designs for *

*each cycle of action research*

Developing the Literature Review

Finally, I don't know where you are in your efforts to support or

conduct action research but our students are writing lit reviews.

We are happy to share our hints and

tips<http://ccar.wikispaces.com/Review+Literature> on

how to use technology

to support the writing process and hope you will share yours.

The Center for Collaborative Action Research wiki is open

for anyone to add to their ideas and I hope you will want to

share your thoughts.

Wishing you all continuous improvement in all you do,

Margaret

Chair AR SIG

Tue, Sep 13, 2011 9:02:51 PM

August 19, 2011

Hello Action Research SIG Members,

I hope you are enjoying your summer. I know some of you are reading proposals. This is your

friendly reminder that you need to complete the review process by the Aug 31th.

We are most grateful for your help.

Most of you are about to start a new school year. (I teach in year round program, so we

started in July). We are at the stage of examining ethical issues. And our university is

rethinking the issues of IRB review and action research. Currently the thesis advisors

informally assume the responsibility for assuring that the students use ethical

procedures. We might formalize this somewhat by appointing the action research

advisors to the IRB committee. I wonder how you deal with ethical issues in your institutions?

A number of people have raised this issue at the conference earlier this year and I have

received a few emails about it. So I created a page to collect our thought on this topic.

And I open a poll that if we all take we will know how we are collectively dealing with

reviewing ethical issues. The discussion and poll is found at the Center for Collaborative

Action Research:

http://ccar.wikispaces.com/Ethical+Issues

The poll will take you less than a minute. If you want to add to the discussion,

it is very easy to do this. It is a wiki-web page and is easy to edit, the

"edit this page" button is at the top and to the right of the title "Ethical Issues."

Then when you finish adding to the page, the save this page will be on the top

right. Editing is just like any word processing. Options are at the top.

If you feel more comfortable in a discussion forum, then push the tab "discussion"

and respond to the question I left of start a new discussion.

Looking forward to your ideas. And if you have another topic you want to discuss,

let me know I would be happy to set up a page for discussion.

Margaret

Chair, Action Research SIG

========================================================================================

April 4, 2011

Greetings:

Looking forward to seeing AR SIG members in New Orleans. Please help spread the word regarding this year's inaugural Action Research Community Share Event, scheduled for Monday evening, April 11, in conjunction with our AR SIG Business Meeting. Action Researchers from New Orleans will be present to share their thoughts on developing action research communities of practice. We also still have openings for the school visit during the day on Monday, April 11. This visit will feature participation as a part St. Benilde's Annual Lesson Study day. The visit will take place between 11 am and 2 pm. The event is FREE for AERA Conference participants, but you need to sign up in advance. (Please contact me at lrowell@sandiego.edu to reserve a spot). The Community Share event will take place from 6:15-7:45 pm in the Crescent Room at the Doubletree Hotel.

See you soon!

Lonnie Rowell

September 1, 2010

Hello AERA Action Researcher:

This year is the year we elect our new SIG officers. On this page we will be posting the names, bios and other information regarding those who are running for office in our SIG. The election will be held in January 2011, concurrent with other AERA elections. If you would like to nominate yourself for a position, please contact Carrie Rogers at cbrogers@wcu.edu. We are inviting nominations for SIG Chair, SIG Treasurer & Conference/Program Chair. So please submit your name! Names need to be submitted to Carrie by 9/30/10.

Carrie Rogers

Western Carlina University

August 5, 2010

Hi AERA Action Researcher:

Thanks to those who responded to the NING poll, based on the result we will let the NING group expire. I think that there are enough opportunities for active dialogue around action research. If you want more discussion, you can join practitioner-researcher list which is a great source of innovative ideas around action research.

Mapping our visitors...

I found a new way to use a map on our site. Custrmaps will automatically place the visitors to the website on a map. It does not seem to happen immediately, I am guessing there is a 24 hour delay but I am not sure. But if you come from a country other then England or the U.S., you can test how long it takes for your visit to show up. Then you can leave a comment on the page. I am sure this is a tool that others of you will find useful. It is easy to set up and helps a community see who is visiting and from what part of the world. Click on Mapping our Visitors from the menu on the left.

And while you are here, take a few minutes to look around. If you want to help us build the space, become a member by sending me a request with the email you want to use. Then you can sign on and create your own pages. You are welcome to use the space for your groups. You can just create pages off of the main space and enjoy the use of the wiki-web.

Most of you are likely to be on break enjoying your summer, at Pepperdine we are a 13 month learning technologies program with July as the overlap month. That means that we are starting the action research process again with cadre 13 and our goal is to get better at doing it every year (smile).

Warmly,

Margaret Riel

AERA AR SIG Chair

Pepperdine University

760 618 1314

mriel@pepperdine.edu

====================================================================================================================================================================================================

July 28, 2010

Hello AERA SIG Members,

I hope you are enjoying the quiet after the rush to get AERA papers submitted. (July is a busy month for me as our program at Pepperdine U. is a 13 month programs and July is overlap month. We have successfully graduated our action researchers and we are starting the cycle over. )

Thanks for the quick reply on the poll on a strategy to encourage our teaching action researchers. We had 43 people vote and 99% want to make it possible for teachers (and possibly others) who work in the k-12 sector who are selected to present by our SIG to be able to sign up at the student rate. Our SIG would pay the difference. We will take a look at the people who fit this category and the newly formed Sponsoring Teachers Committee (sig officers and anyone who wants to join the committee) will make this offer to people who meet this requirement. Once the review process is done, we will report the number of presenters who are in this category. Thanks to all of you who responded.

Here are the results:

Should we agree to make it possible for K-12 teachers who have their sessions accepted to register as students? This would mean that we contribute $185 for each k-12 teacher that we accept? Is this a good use of the funds we collect?

I think this is is a good use of the money, in effect, researchers are inviting k-12 teachers to the conference 74% (32)

A modified position is that k-12 teachers would apply and leadership committee will review and award a set number of paid registrations23% (10)

No, I think that there are other better uses for the funds 2% (1)

Total votes: 43

I have another question to ask all of you and I will again use a poll. We have a NING Community page that we started at the same time as we started this page. We have to decide in August if we want to pay for it. The page is here....

http://actionresearchworld.ning.com/

I stopped advertising it as we would need a NING community organizer to make this work-- I am ready to admit that I am over extended. But it is a good interactive context. And some of you might prefer this to the wiki which is more of a website with interactive possibilities. We could start with the small fee -- about $30 a year and then move up if we use it with more then 150 people. But this level of connection might be all you are interested in at the moment. I know many of us suffer from too much social networking.

http://host1.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=20027

That's all for now...

Margaret

May 27, 2010

Hi AERA AR SIG members,

AERA has created a survey to help SIGs develop. If you have a few minutes it would be great to get your feedback.

If you are interested in participating, please go to:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AERA_SIG_Member_Feedback_Survey

You can specify action research sig and respond for our sig. I am not sure what happens to the feedback but I am assuming that it will be shared with us in some format.

We have over 350 people signed up in our google site, but we have only 35 who have added their information as members. I have recently added some tech videos to help if you are having trouble logging in and interacting with the site.Tech help appears in the menu at the left.

It would be great to see more people appear on the members page. Also feel free to share information either in a message to the group, or as an entry in our AR1World Blog. And if you have ideas for how to build the action research community, please share your ideas. There are a number of SIGs that center on similar topics (Educational Change, self-study of teacher ed practices, teacher as researcher) --would it be a good idea to reach out to them and create links across our SIGs? If you have thoughts on this or other issues, feel free to start a discussion...

We also have a poll to help us determine what are the best ways to spend our resources. So far 37 people have responded.

Looking forward to hearing from more of you.

Margaret Riel

Chair AERA AR SIG

May 10, 2010

NOTES FROM THE AERA 2010 Meeting

Hello Action Researchers,

We had a great community meeting at AERA although we missed the hundreds of

you that did not make it to the meetings. We are a growing SIG and I hope

that over this next year more of you will want to play an active role. We

all had a chance to introduce ourselves and say a bit about what we are

doing in action research. It was great to meet so many of you.

At our community/business meeting, we had reports for each of the officers.

(This is the short version, see the attached minutes for the longer version.)

Program Chairs - Danelle Stevens and Arthur Bangert: We had a number

of great sessions in the program. There were 43 submissions and we accepted

23 with a 50% acceptance rate. Our SIG had 15 papers with six sessions

three poster and five round tables. The number of sessions is no

longer computed on our size alone but on the number of submissions.

So we hope you will consider submitting a session for next

year in New Orleans.

Treasurer Deniz Palak: Currently we have about $15,000 in our budget and

we have 275 members. We talked about ideas for how to use these funds

to develop the action research community. We discussed some

ideas and we are asking for your input in a poll on our google

site. (see Polls in the left menu)

SIG Chair and Communication Officer Margaret Riel and Derrel Fincher:

We have a website where were are organizing our resources

and communication. We have decided not to use the AERA tools but instead we

have a website -- (this one) and a blog AR1WORLD (our one world). We hope

you will be active in both (see links in menu for blog). If you don't see the add or

edit button, you need to be added as member. Send a note to

derrel@fincher.com or mriel@pepperdine.edu .

New Ideas

We have funds but spending them require some degree of work by our members.

Ideas that were proposed include:

A Graduate student award for best AR dissertation submitted to AERA AR SIG

Support for local action researchers to put on a panel presentation at the community meeting

Partnership with other organizations to provide regional training in action research

Provide travel "grants" that people can apply for when presenting at AERA

Creating Mentoring links between members with some support for the mentors'

We have created poll where you weigh in on these ideas. Feel free to use

comments to add you views.

Also there was a request for a page for publishers of action research and conference listings

I am happy to create the page, but everyone will have to create the entries. You will find

the pages linked in the menu.

We are proposing a change in the bylaws to be consistent with the AERA

template which creates one- year terms for officers setting up yearly elections

which take place in November for the following year. We need to have two

people running for each office. We thanked Arthur Bangert for his service as

program chair and the rest of your officers are happy to serve another year as

long as you are happy with the service.

As stated in our bylaws, we have three elected offices. The other positions

(program co-chair, communication and nomination officers and an awards

chair if needed) are appointed by the leadership team.

SIG CHAIR

1. Margaret Riel

2.

SIG PROGRAM CHAIR

1. Danelle Stevens

2. Linnea Rademacher

3. Lonnie Rowell

4. Gail Zieman

TREASURER/SECRETARY

1. Deniz Palak

2. Pier Junor Clarke

3. Rachel Oppenheim

If you are interested in running for an office (we need at least one

more person to run for chair), please send your names to Carrie

Rogers (carrie_rgrs@yahoo.com) and she will be contacting you

for your information later in the year when we are ready for elections.

Warmly,

Margaret

Feb 22, 2010

Hello Action Research SIG Members,

This is busy time as we prepare for the AREA meetings in Denver. We hope you are coming and we especially hope that as you plan your schedule, you will start by adding the AR SIG Community Reception and Meeting which is scheduled:

Action Research SIG Community (Business) Meeting Time: Sun, May 2 - 6:15pm - 8:15pm

Place: Colorado Convention Center, Room 604

If you have ideas for what you would like to see take place during our meeting, please drop me a line and we will add you to the planning team. We know that there will be food and drink and good company and lots of opportunities for networking. Bring students and friends who might be interesting in joining our SIG. We are looking forward to this opportunity to get to know you better.

There are some announcements -- a conference at USD and chapter writing opportunity--they are posted on announcement page. SIG members are welcome to post announcements, but you have to sign-in (the sign-in option is easy to miss as it is at the bottom of the page. Once you have signed in, you can have your computer remember sign you in automatically.) If you have trouble, I am happy to help.

You will soon be hearing from our program chair Dannelle Stevens, about volunteering to review proposals for the 2011 meetings. We had many people volunteer for this year and if you want to volunteer again, please let Danelle know (stevensd@pdx.edu). I know this seems like a long way away but AERA is clear on having strong review panels in place early as it will not be long before the cycle starts over again.

Margaret Riel

Chair

AERA AR SIG

January 26, 2010

Hi AERA Action Researchers,

Welcome to the new year and a special welcome to Kathy Lindstrom, Judy Wilson, Judith Pederson who recently joined our SIG. Despite a great deal of work by Derrel Fincher, our communication officer I have not seen messages on the discussion list, and I have had trouble sending to it in the past. But fortunately, I think I can reach all of the SIG members on this announce list. Unfortunately you cannot use reply to write back. But we have created other ways to interact....

COMMUNITY TOOLS

Our SIG does have a wiki-website called....AERA AR SIG -Wiki means fast --and it is used to signal that --with your basic word processing skills--you can interact with the web content. There is an edit button that shows up in the top right corner and after you click it, you can make changes on that page. Then you use the save button which shares your changes with the rest of us. Go ahead and try it--it is easy. On our AR SIG discussion page you can use the new post button to start a new discussion on any topic (or click on any topic listed to add your comments).

We hope you will want to add your name in the members section. This way others can find you and we can start to build the community.

SHARING PRACTICE

I hope that you will want to share what you do to prepare action researchers with each other. (My action research question: If I share my instructional activities with members of the AR SIG, will this result in others sharing their ideas or dialog around the ideas shared?)

In my teaching of action research, I am at the point of helping graduate students master some qualitative analysis skills. I use a tutorial that was created by SRI for OERI as reading (a link to this and other ideas can be found at the Center for Collaborative Action Research Interact) .

I have students work with some data I have collected in survey monkey where action researchers and faculty who teach action research are asked to define action research. My students then use the survey data to practice their analytic skills. You are welcome to respond to this if you are interested in seeing the survey. We have a lively discussion around the problems that arise as you try to talk about the data in ways that can be supported with evidence. My goal in this activity are to:

• 1. help students build a deeper understanding of action research.

  2. surface issues and methods in doing research.

  3. help students craft a section that describes action research for their reports.

I would love to see links to your syllabi or descriptions of how you help students with research methods. This can be added to Interact under Analyze Data.

I hope that those of you engaged in action research, and those of you supporting others, will share your outcomes. There is place on Interact to do that but you can also put a link there to any other place where you want to share the information.

I hope you are finding problems that are worth solving...

and I wish you insight and success in solving them.

Margaret Riel

AERA AR SIG Chair

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Margaret Riel <mriel@pepperdine.edu>

Sr. Researcher, Center for Technology in Learning SRI-International

Co-Chair M. A in Learning Technologies Pepperdine University

http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/mriel/office

BLOG: http://mindmaps.typepad.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 26, 2009

I assume that you joined this site because you either support action researchers or you are an action researcher yourself. Everyone will be moving through their cycles of action research on different schedules. But let's assume that, for programs that started in September, researchers are currently developing their plans for action research and conducting their review of the literature.

I invite you to share resources that you find helpful in supporting action researchers as they plan or research their projects or in planning for your action research. For planning action research projects, I have collected some suggestions that I offer my students on a open wiki for sharing ideas about supporting the planning process. Feel free to add your ideas or discuss what is there.

http://ccar.wikispaces.com/Plan+Action

I wonder if others have ideas about helping researchers with their action research questions. I accept "How Do I..." questions for the over action research project, but I feel relatively strongly that cycle questions should clearly identify the action that is planned and the outcome that will be studied. For example "Will giving teams more control over the choice of topics and their team partners, result in deeper learning of the content." Or "If I work with our grade level team of teachers to develop a wiki, will it lead to sharing of teaching strategies that moves beyond logistics."

So my question to you is how do you support action researchers in their development of the their research questions? (Feel free to respond on the wiki (http://ccar.wikispaces.com/Develop+Questions) or add to this google site. Also I think it would be great is we share advice on helping students to write lit reviews. I have a set of guidelines I use but I suspect that all of you have developed things that are similar and it would be great to share them. (Feel free to add your ideas on the ccar wiki (http://ccar.wikispaces.com/developing+the+literature+review)--you are most welcome!).

We also have thisshared space \and each of you are free to list your programs under Action Research World in the menu at the left. and then create and link to pages you can use with your groups. You will see that Jeff Daitsman is using this space for his program. You are welcome to use it for your programs. Are there topics you would like to discuss? What do you find is the most different part of either supporting or doing action research?

Margaret Riel Chair

AERA AR SIG

October 5, 2009

Hello AERA SIG Action Researchers,

I am posting information about a position at Teachers College, at Columbia University that includes supervising action research. in a new section called job postings.

(Nancy, are welcome to attach the file and add contact information if you would like--I made you a member so you could change it.) Anyone else who wants to be a member just let me, or one of the officers, know and we will be happy to add you. -- (FYI) I will be away from email for about 4 days starting tomorrow. )

I hope everyone is having a great start of the year. I am working with a dozen students as they work through their ideas for action research. I have put my notes, ideas and strategies for supporting action research on a wiki (http://ccar.wikispaces.com) and I welcome discussion around them. There is a discussion tab on every page, or you can just edit the pages and add your ideas. I think it would be great to create a wiki of share teaching strategies for supporting action research. I look forward to hearing your ideas for each of the phases of supporting action research.

If anyone has ideas that they want to share with the community, feel free to use google site http://sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig/ or the NING (http://actionresearchworld.ning.com). I am sending this to AERA AR discussion listserv as well as a test --but I mostly get denied when I try to post (even through I have a joined a dozen times). Maybe it will work this time. (If you get two copies, please ignore the second one but you will know that the discussion forum is working.)

Let us know if you have ideas for building a stronger sense of community.

Margaret

August 10, 2009

Hi, folks,

Peer-review of materials in various forms from conference proposals to journal articles to promotion and tenure decisions, are the heart of the academy. The reviewers are often the unsung heroes and heroines of this essential part of our work. This year AERA will be honoring the reviewers selected in a more systematic and public way! Art and I will keep you updated on that!

We just finished assigning all the proposals to our 15 reviewers. We had 43 individual paper submissions and 3 proposals for sessions. Each reviewer will have 8-10 proposals to review because each submission gets reviewed by 3 people. Reviews are due by September 15, 2009.

Thanks so much for all of those that are helping us review submissions. The peer-review process is the heart of the academy.

FOR the REVIEWERS: If you log onto the AERA website with your user name and password, you will see the papers that need to be reviewed.

And, while you are in there, be sure to check the Message Center for any other updates on the process.

FOR the SUBMITTERS: We expect the reviews back by September 15 and, then, we will be able to notify you all by early November.

Thank you, once again, for your participation.

Sincerely,

Dannelle D. Stevens (stevensd@pdx.edu) and Art Bangert (abangert@montana.edu)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

July, 2009

Update from the SIG Chair

Hi all,

I hope all of you were able to submit sessions to AERA and we look forward to seeing all of you in Colorado in April.

This is our site and you are welcome to use it as you like. I have created a section for you to add your site under Action Research World and you are welcome to use the space as you like. The goal is for us to think about action research together. As you begin teaching, it would be great to be able to see how others organize support for action researchers.

Jeff Daitsman, a new SIG member asked if he could use it share their mission statement and coordinate their classes. I think we want the space to be as open as possible to all of your needs. So if you want to use the site, just add a link off of Action Research World and then you have space to use as you like.

I am still hoping that someone will share a banner design for action research. I currently have the one I used for the courses in 2008 and it has an Olympic theme which is less relevant now.

Margaret