Action Research Reflections

As I continued to study action research through week 2 of this course, it became clear that action research is inescapable; it just be going on in every campus, classroom, and hallway because it is the way we grow and learn as educators.  When I first thought about action research, I pictured it as one big project, one thing to tackle for the school year.  However, I have learned that action research is going on everywhere and everyday.  Everyone (hopefully) is doing some kind of action research, even though it is probably not systemic and organized as it would be in a Master's program.  As I read about the nine areas in which action research can take place, I thought of so many ideas and ways to monitor improvement and student performance on campus.  The tricky part is narrowing it down!  It looks like it can be easy to wear too many hats at once.  Perhaps it is a good practice to have people on campus who are specifically in charge of the growth in each of the nine areas.  That way monitoring and follow-through is inevitable.

I also found it interesting that the video repeatedly mention data, which sometimes is one of those four-letter words on my campus.  However, the truth is that we cannot escape it.  It is part of action research and we must embrace those numbers for what they are: part of the story.  It is up to the teacher to fill in the rest of the story through qualitative action research.

I look forward to engaging in my own action research (whenever I narrow it down) and reading about the action research of others.