Week 5

Coming into this course, I did not understand the nomenclature involving action research.  In my ten years of education, I have mostly done what I am told and not been involved in investigating or solving problems.  When I decided to begin my master’s degree classes, I envisioned reading about what others had done as school leaders and analyzing their findings.  Action research allows the principal to conduct his or her own research and then decide the best way to adapt to the situation at their campus.  Situations from a textbook may apply to your campus, but at times, no campus will be the same.  It is up to the leadership of that campus to apply what they know and what they find to the situation they encounter. 

In Week One, we defined Administrative inquiry through reading the Dana text. “Inquiring professionals seek out change and reflect on their practice by posing questions or “wonderings,” collecting data to gain insights into their wonderings, analyzing the data along with reading relevant literature, making changes in practice based on new understandings developed during inquiry, and sharing findings with other.”(Dana, pg. 2-3) Week One also allowed us to develop our own blogs dealing with Action Research.  I have never been interested in blogs and rarely visited them.  Since, I have designed my own blog, I have begun to research other’s blog and become enlightened to the information that can be spread through technology. 

In Week Two, we viewed interviews from three educational leaders.  They described action research on their campus and provided examples of findings they have discovered.  Additionally, we dissected nine common action research topics to give us ideas about our research.  I decided to pick a topic that dealt with school performance.  I was curious to find the correlation between passing rates of involved students versus non-involved students.  I met with my site-supervisor and he agreed that this was a quality topic and was interested to hear about my findings.

Week three’s assignment called for us to decide on an action research topic and design our plan.  The question I will pose deals with, “What role does participation in extra-curricular activities have on student’s grades, eligibility and how do these activities impact the culture of the school?”
I again met with my site supervisor to decide on possible contacts and resources needed to address my research.  We discussed various avenues of research including, classrooms, websites, attendance logs and grade reports.  Week 3 concluded with the eight steps in analyzing action research, described in the Harris text. Basically, we broke down our topic and answered any questions we might have before we began extensive research.  We posted our findings in our blogs and also commented on other students; blogs.

In Week 4, we analyzed methods for collecting data. These methods included the Force Field Analysis, Delphi Method, Nominal Group.  Because I am very busy with various activities, the Delphi method caught my attention. This method involves getting a large amount of input for school improvement in a very short amount of time.  Questions are sent to as many as 20 stakeholders via email, which deal directly with a school issue. A facilitator gathers the responses and publishes them for all the responders to view.  A summary of answers is presented to the group and members adjust original responses to form a consensus with the group.  I will use this method in my action research by emailing sponsors and coaches to investigate hypothesis.

Other highlights of this course include the discussion boards and web conferences that Dr. Abshire administered.  Not only did we get to collaborate with other future leaders on action research but we also got the opportunity to help each other on problems we had with various technological applications. 

Dana, N.F. (2009) Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as the Action Researcher: Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press