Review #3 Lee1/5
Miha Lee
Professor Rivas
SED 600
11 April 2007
Reflection on Action Research Presentations
Although I took a credential course in a college of education, those theories and applications in literature I had learned offered me little inthe way of keeping my students engaged or gauging how many of my lessons led to serious learning because at that time I didn’t realized their meaning and importance in my future teaching. However, my attitude changed when I have accumulated teaching experiences in high schools. I wanted to know more about the effective teaching and learning process. This is the main reason for taking this course, but I still feel the need to apply my learning to my teaching to test the usefulness of those theories. Action research provides an opportunity to implement my learning into my teaching practice. In addition, action research gives me achance to reflect on my own practices and the proficiencies ofmy students with an eye toward what works and whatdoesn’t. (Ferrance, 2000) Thus, action research contributes to the development ofmy knowledge and skills about teaching and learning.
On the other hand, isolation is one of the downsides of teaching. Teachers areoften the sole adult in a room of children, and have littleor no time scheduled for professional conversations withothers. (Johnson, 2007) However, one of the basic principles of action research is thatresearcher need others’ ideas for stimulation anddepend on other people’s perspectives to enrich one’s own. (Ferrance, 2000) In this sense, the presentations that were made and will be made in our course allow us to learn from watching other people’s experiences and share my experience with other teachers. The presentations offered me an insight into my own action research and helped me to organize my research project.
The most interesting thing in the presentations was the research topics that the people chose: metacognition, web-based homework, and the nature of science. Those topics made me think about the purpose of doing action research. Obviously, action research is used as a professional development. However, as a ‘science’teacher, I need to focus my research on the effective way of ‘science’teaching and learning process. Every teacher has a problem of improving one’s teaching practice, but particularly these days when students tend to avoid taking science courses, the role of science teachers is critical in motivating their students to want to know more about science and helping their students build understanding of science knowledge. Therefore, I need to choose a topic with regard to the improvement in science education. What is more, another purpose of action research is to bridge the gap between theory and practice. (Johnson, 2007, p32-33) Action research helps me put some of my learning to the test. The topics of the presentations were from their learning in the same program as I have been taking, and suggested a way to use those topics in my teaching. Thus, the presentations were a valuable chance to learn about the methods of science education as well as action research.
For my action research topic, I already decided ‘guided inquiry as a teaching strategy’. My interest has been in the effective method of teaching chemistry since I became a chemistry teacher. Chemistry deals with microscopic world to explain the macroscopic phenomena, which cause students to have difficulty learning chemistry. I really want to help my students understand the concepts of chemistry by using effective ways of teaching chemistry. During the course, I have found that the constructivism and the inquiry-based teaching help teaching and learning process effectively take place in a science classroom. Thus, I will make a plan to test these theories in my practice, and this action research process also will enable me to improve my teaching skills.
When planning action research, it is vital to review literature of professional researchers. The purpose of the review is to set a research topic in a theoretical context and to lend credibility to a research design. (Johnson, 2007, p.75, 77) Finding and reading research articles that are relevant to my research topic can bring a new perspectiveand experience into my work.While academic research isseen as disconnected from the our daily lives, it can be very helpfulfor teachers to pick up ideas suggested in authentic Journal articles, and incorporate them into our own classroom. (Ferrance, 2000) I don’think those presenters began the designs of their researches from the scratch. They gave us the lists of their literature reviewed, that is, theoretical frameworks. Lyle provided us with literature review in detail about the importance of homework, acceptance of web-based applications in education and the use of web-based homework delivery and submission applications. Thepresence of literature review in his presentations helped us to understand the purposes of those researches and helped legitimize those works. Especially, it was impressive that Schus offered the list of reviewed literature with clarifying the sources. I may read many articles and find some of them are interesting and useful for my action research. However, I need to classify the articles to each of themes in my research topic.
Personally, the most difficult step in action research is to design the actions or tools that are used in the research because this step requires creativity of researchers. Schus’idea of using objectives list as a tool to develop metacognitive skills was the best part of his research. When he showed a sample of the objectives list and a completed list with his data collecting method, I learned that I should figure out my own research tools. Also, Kipfel’s techniques, which were used to explicitly teach the nature of science, were unique. However, Lyle’s use of commercial provider of web-based homework services is not creative, and he didn’t make those questions of the homework. If he had used his own website and his own creative homework, his research would have been more valuable.
In my research, I will design a series of guided inquiry activities in which my students will learn about the unit on metal. I can’t create new experimental methods, but I will employ conventional activities to design guided inquiry activities by modifying and rearranging them to promote students’investigations and conceptual changes. Actually, I did this all the time, but this time the design will be more theoretical based and systematic. Furthermore, I will find out the effectiveness of my designs and their implementation to improve those activities.
The next question in the process of action research is to make a plan for data collection. (Johnson, 2007) Actually when we consider conducting an action research, we already know the students as an experimental group and the time when the action will be taken. However, researchers should establish an action plan and timetable for data collection because planning data collection decideswhat action needs to be taken. (Ferrance, 2000, Johnson, 2007) The presenters offered us their data collection method in a form of ‘Time and Place’, ‘Methodology’and ‘How Results were Obtained’. Some of them allowed us to grasp the methodology in their research, but most of data collecting methods were explained by the results and findings. Before establishing my timetable for data collection, I should look over the unit and the semester plan to decide which subunits are required to do inquiry activities. I am still working on the question; how structured andsystematic will the collection be?
And most importantly, multiple sources of dataare used to better understand the scope of happeningsin the classroom or school. (Ferrance, 2000)We need to use at least twodata sources (triangulation) as evidences to back up our claims in the discussion and conclusion in our action research. Triangulation means looking at something from more than one perspective. (Johnson, 2007, p.101-102) All of the presenters gave us at least two kinds of data. One is directly from the results of actions such as objectives lists, homework analysis and pre-post tests comparison of NOS concepts. The other is indirectly from the activities such as survey to assess the students’attitude toward those activities.
During the research, I will collect the lap papers that students will report their observations and give their explanations to the observations. And I will carry out pre-post test to measure the changes in conceptions about metal. Also, I will conduct a survey that asks for the students’ views onwhether my strategies help them to learn the concept of metal and its usefulness in their lives.
Presenting the results and findings asks researchers to select the data that are most appropriate for the issuebeing researched and to organize the data in a way that makes it useful toidentify trends and themes. (Ferrance, 2000) Surprisingly, those data in the presentations were quantitative, not qualitative data. They show graphs, tables, and correlations values to evidence their conclusions. Schus’s study was about the metacognitive learning, and he showed us the change of predictive ability from the first chapter to the last chapter using correlation value comparison. It was a good example of quantitative analysis. While such numbers and graphs make the finding of trends and patterns easy, I wanted to know more about their questions in the tests and surveys to understand the meaning of the researches. In fact, every authentic research article provides a context for its data, sometimes including a diagram of the investigation set up. In this sense, Lyle’s analysis of survey was the best part of his research presentation. In his presentation, he introduced each question and its responses.
My data will be both quantitative and qualitative. For my qualitative data that are not quantifiable, I need to review holistically to code important elements or themes from the data. Then, I will summarize the coded data in tabular form for each question from answers in the lap paper and opinions and attitudes in the survey. In addition to the table, I will develop conceptual maps for representative data to find the trends of conceptual change throughout the inquiry activities. I also present my quantitative data in written, tabular and graphical form to compare the results from the pre and posttest.
Final step of the presentation was to assess the effects of the intervention to determine ifimprovement has occurred. (Ferrance, 2000) If there is improvement, researcher should ask the question; do the data clearly provide the supporting evidence?If no, what changes can be made to the actions toelicit better results? This was the part of conclusion, recommendation, and limitation. In conclusion, only Lyle admitted that there was no significant change in student achievement attributable to the use of Web-based homework. The other two presenters concluded that their researches achieved intended goals. However, the goal of action research is not to prove anything, but to understand. (Johnson, 2007) Therefore, Lyle’s study has its own meaning and his survey results supported the other merits of using web-based homework. The presenters also suggested limitation of their research and application of the results to other class situations. We hope that as a result of our action research project, we can identifyadditional questions raised by the data and plan foradditional improvements, revisions, and next steps.
Action research can be a worthwhile pursuit for educatorsfor a number of reasons. Foremost among these is simplythe desire to know more. Good teachers are, after all,themselves students, and often look for ways to expandupon their existing knowledge. (Ferrance, 2000) We will learn a lot from the process as well as the results of our own action research. Also, bydoing our own action research we could gain a betterperspective into our own teaching and the students’learning and confidence in our work.
However, doing action research still seems to be challenging. Although Johnson’s book helped us be encouraged, these presentations guided me to find my way of doing action research by showing the extent to which their researches covered.
Reference
Ferrance, E., 2000, Action Research, Northeast and Islands Regional EducationalLaboratory At Brown University, Providence, RI, Retrieved March 30, 2007 from
Johnson, A, P. (2007) A Short Guide to Action Research (3rd edition), Boston, MA: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The action research planner (3rd ed.).Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press.
Watts, H. (1985). When teachers are researchers, teaching improves. Journal ofStaff Development, 6 (2), 118-127.