This research class was a very important class
because it taught me many different things that I took for granted. In my first class we learned about leadership
and how important leadership is to developing a great school for our
students. We learned many leadership
styles that will shape the culture of our campus, teachers, and students. I developed a better understanding for
administration and the roles they play in making our school great. I also realized that teachers and
administration need to work together for a common goal which is to increase
student performance. In this class we
talked about leadership in week two and Kouzes
and Posner state their five practices of leadership as follows: “model the way,
inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, encourage
the heart”. These principles are
important because they guide us as leaders to bring out the best in our
students and staff. In
this class we learned what research is and how important it is to developing an
action research plan. We also learned
the importance of collecting data and what that data can do for the overall
research of your action research project.
In 5301week
one, we learned how to develop a very important tool which will allow us to put
many of our research concepts into reality.
The action research plan as defined by Fitchman is,” Administrative inquiry or action
research is a process of and administrator engaging and determining and idea
and taking action for change based on what is learned by principals, teachers,
and people involved in the school.” The
ultimate goal of any action research inquiry is to increase student performance
in your school. This class also taught
us the difference between action research and the old traditional style of
doing research. The difference in action
research to traditional educational research is the involvement of the
administrators and staff to participate and use their personal
experiences. They collaborate with one
another these experiences and decide what the best results are based on the
collaboration with the entire staff.
Basically, it gives everyone a stake in the decision to determine what
will help our students be more successful.
We also discussed the importance of professional learning communities in
developing our action research. The
learning communities as stated by Fichtman are” small groups of
faculty that meet weekly to learn and study more effective teaching strategies
and practices. It is becoming an
effective tool to replace outside professional developments with staff based
professional developments which are geared more for action research style
projects.
In week two we discussed the nine areas that
administrators feel are crucial in developing an action research project. One particular are of importance that hits
our school hard is social justice and equity.
We are dealing with a lot of students that come from Mexico that are
leaning the English language and are struggling on our TEKS and STAAR exit
exams. We have a high number of these
kids and they are still expected to pass our exams from the state. Administration is working hard with teachers
to develop a plan to get these kids on level to be successful not only on the
exams, but in the rest of their lives. This
is a prime example of learning communities helping develop action research.
Throughout the entire process we have developed a
great tool in action research. In this
class each week, we developed a blog and put different things that we felt were
important in developing our action research project. Each week something different was put on the
blog that our colleagues had to comment on to help us shape our plan. We met with our site supervisors and
developed three ideas that would be great action research topics and decided on
one final product that we put on our blog for others to critique and
comment. We also developed an outline
for our action research. The SIP/PIP
model in the resources section of blackboard helped us shape our action
research plan by outlining the main points of interest for my project. We developed an outline that consisted of
goals, activities, data gathering, timeline, monitoring, and assessing our
research draft for our site supervisor.
We then collaborated and came up with the idea for and action research
topic that pertained to extra-curricular activities and increased student
performance. This topic is of great
interest to me because I coach and teach at a high school in Texas and I
believe through my research and data that I can prove the significance of these
activities and the increased performance of students.
In the final weeks of our course we have put our
plans and outlines on our blogs and asked for our classmates to comment and
share what sounds good or ways to improve our research. We also learned strategies from our Harris
text book that can be used for my action research project. These strategies as stated by Harris are the
“Force Field Theory, the Delphi Method, and the Nominal Group Model”. These three strategies can help support and
sustain our action research project. As
I sum up my experience in the 5301 research class I can tell you that I have
learned more about research and the importance it plays on solving problems and
developing issues. The benefits of
action research are to develop a deeper understanding by working collectively
on issues that affect our campus. We
must identify the problems and successes, identify the solutions to the
problems, and improve the overall success of the issue at hand. This process creates a learning environment
that is significant and relevant. It
also promotes and energizes staff members to work harder so they can get the
best out of their students. Action
research can create a support group for the administration, teachers, parents,
and students of our school. The overall
goal of any action research project is to increase student improvement and
performance in our schools.
