What are the benefits of action research? The article that we read this week lists six benefits of action research. The benefits that I find the most exciting are those that emphasize the personal nature of action research that leads to the empowerment of teachers. Julie Nora's experience with action research demonstrates these benefits. Her state requires students to take a standards-based exam in the 4th, 8th, and 10th grades. As an ESL teacher, the question Nora posed is, "Does the explicit teaching of the NCEE standards enhance ESL student performance?" That's a powerful question! Here the state has introduced a new requirement and instead of jumping on the NCEE standards-wagon, Nora is saying, "Whoa! Is teaching to these standards going to make things better or worse for my students?" Teachers often get swept along in education reforms that get handed down to them by people who are not concerned with the needs of individual classes. Nora demonstrates how a single teacher can effectively stand her ground for herself and for her students.
What experiences do you have conducting research that could help you in this process?Although I have never conducted an action research project, I am a good researcher. I was a Literature major, so I had to write a lot of papers. I know how to gather information, analyze it, and determine whether or not it is useful. My experience with research will help me in the initial stages of action research as I formulate my question and gather data. It will also help me in the end stages as I analyze the results and reflect on what comes next. However, when you write a paper, you are not required to take action. It's the "action" part of action research that my previous experience cannot help me with.
What questions do you have? For my action research, I have asked the teachers of the 6th-8th Math class and the 2nd/3rd Language Arts class to use flipped classrooms in their instruction. Both classes are using curricula that are teacher-intensive which is fine when you are teaching one grade level but problematic when one teacher is trying to teach 2 or 3 grades during the same period. The problem I am having is, how do I measure the impact that flipped learning makes? What should I measure? How?
Hi Teri, like you, I haven't conducted an action research project yet. I also have experience researching and collecting data (like for the previous Hawaii evaluation system PEP-T), but not too much of the "action" part. I am really looking forward to that part and how it might make a difference in student achievement! :-)
ReplyDeletegreat questions! What is your goal with flipping the classroom? How will you know if they achieve it, or make progress towards it?
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