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Conducting Action Research

This document discusses conducting action research in education. It explains that action research can be undertaken by individual teachers, groups of teachers, or in collaboration with researchers. Action research can be used to study various areas like teaching methods, learning strategies, and evaluation procedures. The document outlines the typical steps of action research, including planning an intervention, implementing it, collecting data, and reflecting on results to inform future practice. Several models of the action research process are presented, generally involving planning, action, observation, reflection and repeated cycles of improvement. Formulating a good research question that can lead to measurable changes is emphasized.

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Tuanito Nguyen
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84 views21 pages

Conducting Action Research

This document discusses conducting action research in education. It explains that action research can be undertaken by individual teachers, groups of teachers, or in collaboration with researchers. Action research can be used to study various areas like teaching methods, learning strategies, and evaluation procedures. The document outlines the typical steps of action research, including planning an intervention, implementing it, collecting data, and reflecting on results to inform future practice. Several models of the action research process are presented, generally involving planning, action, observation, reflection and repeated cycles of improvement. Formulating a good research question that can lead to measurable changes is emphasized.

Uploaded by

Tuanito Nguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CONDUCTING ACTION RESEARCH

Nhat Tuan Nguyen, Ph.D.


Hanoi University
Teaching vs Researching
The basic instinct
• It can be undertaken by the individual teacher, a group of
teachers working cooperatively within one school, or a
teacher or teachers working alongside a researcher or
researchers in a sustained relationship, possibly with
other interested parties like advisers, university
departments and sponsors on the periphery (Holly and
Whitehead 1986).

Action Research
Action research can be used in a variety of areas, for example:
• Teaching methods: replacing a traditional method by a discovery method
• Learning strategies: adopting an integrated approach to learning in preference
to a single-subject style of teaching and learning
• Evaluative procedures: improving one’s methods of continuous assessment
• Continuing professional development of teachers: improving teaching skills,
developing new methods of learning, increasing powers of analysis, of
heightening self-awareness
• There are several ways in which the steps of action research
have been analysed. One can suggest that action research can
be cast into two simple stages:
• a diagnostic stage in which the problems are analysed and the
hypotheses developed; and
• a therapeutic stage in which the hypotheses are tested by a
consciously directed intervention or experiment in a situation.
• Lewin (1946; 1948) codified the action research process into
four main stages: planning, acting, observing and reflecting.

Procedures
1. Review your current practice.
2. Identify an aspect that you wish to improve.
3. Imagine a way forward in this.
4. Try it out.
5. Monitor and reflect on what happens.
6. Modify the plan in the light of what has been found, what has
happened, and continue.
7. Evaluate the modified action.
8. Continue until you are satisfied with that aspect of your work
(e.g. repeat the cycle).
 Sagor (2005: 4) sets out a straightforward four-step
model of action research:
1. Clarify vision and targets.
2. Articulate appropriate theory.
3. Implement action and collect data.
4. Reflect on the data and plan informed action
• Topic: what?
• Focus: formulate a question you are going to ask yourself
• Product: what do you expect the outcome to be?
• Mode: how are you going to do it?
• Evidence: how are you going to generate it?

Planning
• Plan what you are going to do and prepare the necessary
materials

• Decide what data you will be able to collect to provide


you with your evidence:

*journal *formative assessment


*examples of work produced
*feedback from the students
• Consider/ discuss any ethical issues (it is about you
improving on your practice)

• Gather as much evidence as possible in whatever form


you can
• Diaries
• Observation
• Questionnaires & interviews
• Recordings, photographic evidence

Methods
• Why are my students lazy?
-> Bad question. Laziness is a broad, subjective and
unmeasurable quality. This line of questioning will not lead
to a positive change in the classroom.

Forming research questions


• Which of my homework assignments generate the highest
number of returns?
-> Better. This can be measured. But of what use would this
information be to the teacher?
• Why are some of my homework assignments returned
and some not?
-> Much better. This question can be answered by putting
homework in categories, recording data on highest and
lowest number of returns, and then using student
questionnaires and interviews to obtain reasons for
returns/no returns. Still, there isn’t a real point to the
research. Teacher research is supposed to be done to
stimulate teacher change.
• How can I increase the amount of out-of-school learning
and studying that my students do in the class?
• What barriers come between students and the completion
and return of their homework?
-> Both of these questions are good. They can be answered
and can lead to teacher/instructional change.
• Issue: “lack of structured, disciplined recall opportunities
in class that could influence learners’ capacity to transfer
vocabulary from short-term to long-term memory and
use”.
• Question: How can I increase the receptive and
productive vocabulary of ESOL learners?

An example
• Vocabulary box
• Worksheets (revision)
• Collaborative story telling
• Vocabulary chart

intervention
• Pre- and post- questionnaires
• Discussion with students and colleagues
• Observations
• Journal

Data collection

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