Action Research

What are the benefits of action research? What experiences do you have conducting research that could help you in this process? What questions do you have?

Action research in education is basically the action research on a self-selected issue within your own classroom. With action research you will able to see effective ways to change teaching in order to increase student achievement. The purpose of action research in education is to develop effective ways to improve ways in teaching.  In order to understand action research you have to conduct an action research, and draws lines on the benefits of an action research.

In every experiment there are procedure that you need to follow. The steps are as follows: 1) Selecting a focus 2) Clarifying Theories 3)Identify Research Questions 4) Correcting Data 5) Analyzing Data 6)Reporting Data 7) Taking Informed Action ( Sagor, 2000).  It is the same with Ferrance Action Research cycle which is stated as follows identification of a problem area, collection and organization of data, interpretation of data, action based on data, and reflection ( 2000). One of the most important step is the initial step in which you have to identify or selecting a concern. If there is no concern/problem then there is no means to research.  Once the concern or problem is identified then a step of planning the course of action is next.  In which Ferrance ( 2000) calls this “problem-solving, not in the sense of trying to find our what is wrong but rather a quest for knowledge about how to improve”.  The idea of finding improvement is more rigorous in which identifying alternatives for the given concern/problem. 

There are various benefits of action research. One of the most intriguing benefit of an action research it provides a systematic framework of your own practice. According to Ferrance the benefits of an action research tend to focuses on school issue, problem or area of collective interest, form of teacher professional development, collegial interaction, potential to impact school change, reflect on own practice, reflect on own practice and improved communication ( Ferrance, 2000). These benefits tend to broaden alternatives in order to improve what is been already been stated as the concern. 

 Since action research tend to emphasize on the benefit of professional development, we do have a various groups on professional development in Fagaitua High School.  We tend to share ideas, collect data and find ways to improve a certain problem that is been constant within our academic learning. We form a professional development group called "ACHIEVE-3000" which focus on the students reading comprehension. Department of Education in American Samoa adopted the Achieve 3000 as a main source in improving reading comprehension. Here in Fagaitua High School, we use the program as our main source. We went through data of student's SAT performance and we came up with the idea of using all content areas except for Math to utilize Achieve-3000. We launched this program last-year and so far the test-results on reading comprehension is improving to 15% increase . We were overwhelm by the results . Technology plays a part within Achieve 3000. In which the internet as well as i-pads were utilize to conduct this program.  The picture below are some of the teachers that are involved with "ACHIEVE-3000" professional development.  This is a solid evidence of how action research is beneficial within the education system. 

    Yet, I still have few question concerning action research. Is is possible to draw any outside agency in helping with finding results of a certain problem? Are there any program available in helping collecting data? And how rigorous is the action research? These are few question on action research. Overall, this approach is very useful in terms of finding alternative and improvements based on the given concern...