This action research project has impacted my students in multiple ways. The first being that it opened their minds to think critically about their learning, not just in regard to seating but as a whole. For example students utilized self monitoring strategies during the speed read activities by keeping track of their progress and using pacing to guide their future activities. The encouragement of metacognitive thinking that the surveys and interviews fostered is a skill the students can continue to build off of during their educational careers. I saw students analyzing the best seating for them every day, and for some students it changed daily. This skill of self regulation will help benefit them in the future. The second impact that action research had on my students was that it created a structure of monitoring where I, as the teacher, was able to use formative assessments to identify a need my students had, address it, and monitor to see if it was successful.
My current teaching practices were changed from this study. Informally in the classroom, I began to seek feedback from students about their individual needs, rather than just assume them. I was able to take data from students that allowed me to focus on their growth and areas of improvement and have numbers to back up those conclusions. By inviting students to be invested in their education by asking for input and feedback, allowing them to set goals and monitor their progress, and giving them agency in the classroom, I have seen a large difference between last semester and this semester. Students were happier and calmer. They enjoyed being in the class and I had to make less behavior redirections. By including these three points, along with the professional growth I had from the action research, I see a major change in my philosophy in the classroom regarding the impact of the environment on student learning, which ultimately changed my teaching methods.
The impact on my current teaching practices prompted me to focus on my professional growth. I was forced to think critically about what was needed in my classroom. I then needed to find research-based solutions so I could potentially solve the area of need. Next, I had to create a plan of implementation and monitoring to see if the intervention was truly helping my class as I was expecting. The collection of these formative data points during the study was good teaching practice overall because as teachers we need to be constantly monitoring our students' academic achievement. Looking at the data provided me examples of where I could modify the implementation of interventions, as needed, and analyze of the overall effectiveness of the intervention. The action research performed in this study taught me on a formal macro-scale what I should and can be doing in the classroom every day and has made me a more critically focused teacher.
The action research performed this semester taught me so many lessons that ranged from personal to professional. I learned that I needed to use my colleagues in my department for aid. They helped me with ideas for lessons and improvements on assessments. They also gave me pointers on behavior management, which by being a first year teacher was fairly lacking. I also learned that making students involved in their education increased their engagement. It also allowed me to build relationships with my students and those relationships helped create the positive environment necessary for learning a new language. Action research brought new points of view to the forefront of my professional thinking. I saw that I needed to purposefully plan everything that goes on my classroom and monitor student understanding consistently and modify my instruction accordingly.
Due to the time constraints of the action research and the data points chosen to be collected, some questions remain.
Because flexible seating is just one variable on classroom environment, how large of an impact did it have compared to other variables such as the teacher, the material covered, and the maturity level of the students?
I think this question could be satisfied if I was able to take more preliminary data. That data would have allowed me to better isolate the variable of flexible seating.
How did flexible seating specifically impact behavior interventions and transition time?
Originally, I wanted to include a specific data point that covered this question using the same form as was used to justify the study but as the study progressed the form used was not able to collect enough data to analyze. I think this was partly due to having a group of new students who were more mature and overall required less redirection. Had I had more time, I would have been able to design a more personalized collection method that would have been able to answer the question above.
Did speed reading activities accurately represent their entire comprehension of the language?
If I were to redo this action research, I would have added more academic data points that included an assessment on their ability to write and an oral comprehension assessment. The addition of these two extra points would increase my confidence in any conclusions drawn about the relationship between academic achievement and flexible seating.
If I was to do this specific action research again, there would be a few things I would change. The first is that I would have started the study earlier but due to time constraints and scheduling of classes in my school, that would continue to be a challenge. I would like to have measured long term growth and I feel like the six weeks was not long enough. The second thing I would change is that I would add more data points focusing on specific behavior interventions. I would like to have been able to measure if flexible seating directly impacted student behavior rather than just student perspectives on their behavior. I struggled collecting the amount of data for this study and more data would require further assistance. The third point would be adding one or two more points of data for academic growth. I truly believe that flexible seating impacted my students' academics and I do not know if the speed reads were the best way to measure it. If I had more academic data points with which to triangulate, there may have been a pattern to support that theory.
As stated above in how action research impacted my current teaching and professional growth, I believe that this experience has fundamentally changed me as an educator. I will now systematically design lessons that have purposeful learning targets and assessments that accurately assess the students' understanding of the material. I will then analyze the assessments, looking for patterns of understanding and of concern. I will then look for possible solutions for the concerns using current research on best practices and consider how they could impact my unique group of students. I will create a plan of implementation and follow through on that plan, assessing throughout to see if the strategy has a positive impact or needs modification. I will then decide if it was significantly efficient and, if yes, continue with it and, if no, start again to find a new strategy.
Looking to the future, I have already decided upon some potential areas to begin researching. I am currently implementing Comprehensible Input in my classroom and I am very much a novice at these strategies. I would like to research two or three strategies focusing on writing and reading that I can really master. I will not have enough time left in this school year to complete another full action research but I will have time to modify this process and find a way to implement a simplified version of this process in my classroom and my personal teaching pedagogy.