Action research is the process of
active classroom research provided by the inquiries of an administrator or
team. The school identifies the problem, formulates a strategy to solve the
problem, implements the strategy, evaluates the effectiveness of the solution,
and refines the problem. (Dana 5) Action research is a continuous cycle of
improvement that specifically focuses on the needs of schools individually and
provides active and continuous research from within making the students,
teachers, and administrators active in the research process. It can be
accomplished through a variety of methods including: college coursework,
superintendent/district meetings, leadership teams, and/or professional
learning communities.
There are major benefits to action
research. The benefits include the administrator has a community of workers to
help find and solve the problems, principals become role models for teachers
and students within their buildings, and best practices noted in education will
increase within the school.
I intend to use action research
through professional learning communities (PLC) and leadership teams I hope to
develop within my school. Being part of a PLC has pushed me to be a better
educator and has helped resolved the gaps in our department. My administrators
have been incredible role models to guide me to being a better team leader and
have helped us collectively identify issues that we could work on as a team. As
a result, our students are learning at incredibly rates, and our scores have
increased dramatically in comparison with the entire district.
Leadership teams are equally
important because they are the voice of the inquiries. An administrator might
have difficulty identifying the major problems that the teachers or students
are struggling with. By creating a leadership team, they can have a
collaborative group working towards a common goal on a larger scale.
Administrators can use blogs in a variety of ways. One
important way to use blogs is to gather data of how students or teachers think.
Very rarely do we think of “thinking” as an evaluative tool because it is so subjective;
however the collection of thoughts can be insightful to an active research
agenda and help guide the research towards greater solutions. Another way blogs
can be used is as a newsletter to teachers. It can be an important tool to
share information to faculty and staff and provide a way of receiving feedback
or thoughts of information of the school.
