Action Research

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.