Action Research

Juana de Guadalupe Flores Avalos

What is action research?

Is the strategy, which a teacher becomes to a researcher, it means that the teacher tries to find possible problematising or any aspect that is not so useful in her or his classroom environment, and then he or she will try to resolve it. Anna Burn (2009)

It means:

*Problematising: “It means taking an area you feel could be done better, subjecting it to questioning, and then developing new ideas and alternatives.” (Anna Burn (2009)) .

•Teacher becomes a researcher.

•Teacher critic her our teaching context.

•Teacher identify a problematising*.

•Teacher develop strategies and possible solutions.

•Teacher resolves the problematising.

What is its process?

According to Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) the steps of action research are:

Planning

Action

Observation

Reflection

Planning

In this step you identify a problem and create an strategy or action plan to apply in this problem.

Example:Problem: -A little boy does not pay attention in the class.

Strategy or action plan:-Become the class more dynamic;with more games, videos, audio, etc.

Action

When the teacher has identified the problem and he have created an action plan, its ready to put it into action.

Observation It the data collected from the action plan

that is applying in the problem, the teacher has to document the information, opinions and more action plans.

Reflection

This is the final step, where the teacher has to evaluate and criticize the result of her/his action plan.

Example from an ESL Classroom

Mr. B wanted to better understand the experiences his ninth grade ESL science students had with learning science in order to provide them with more relevant and effective instruction. Because of their diverse backgrounds, he thought drawings might serve as a rich data source not limited by English language skills. He also knew that drawing would be enjoyable for his students and could serve to get them talking about science. With his five-year performance review coming up, he wanted to have additional content for his portfolio, and action research would be a valuable addition.

Action Research Question

He started with the research question, "What are the experiences of my ESL students with science?" After reviewing the literature using Google Scholar, he modified his question to be more specific. His new question was "What experiences do my ninth grade ESL students have learning science prior to entering my class?" He also added the question, "To what extent do my learners (and my science teaching) show evidence of 21st-Century recommendations for science education made by the US National Research Council?"

Research Plan

His plan was to collect drawings from students in each of his ESL science classes in response to the prompt "Draw yourself learning in science before coming to this country." Mr. B also asked students in his non-ESL classes to draw themselves learning science to allow for a comparison. In order to strengthen his research, he also planned to use additional sources of data. This included having students describe what they drew in writing on the back of their drawing and conducting interviews with five students about their experiences.

Action

To guide his research Mr. B decided to use social constuctivism as a conceptual framework(or theory of understanding) because of its focus on social and cultural aspects of learning.

Observation

To analyze and interpret the data, Mr. B planned to use the rubric found on this site. To help reduce any bias he asked a fellow teacher to also score the drawings using the rubric. This also gave him the opportunity to collaborate and discuss his research with another educator.

Reflection

In addition to modifying his own instruction, Mr. B planned to share the results of his research with other teachers in the science department at their monthly meeting and with other ESL teachers in the school.

This example was taken from this web page: (http://www.drawntoscience.org/educators/action-research/action-research-example-1.html)

Thank you for your attention.

References:

http://www.drawntoscience.org/educators/action-research/action-research-example-1.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYno85t1YmI