action research wk 2 reflection

In week 2, one can see the importance of action research to any administrator.  There are 9 key areas that this can and needs to take place.  The principal must identify the key issues or problems of the campus and use this process to solve and achieve the results desired.  The administrator must not only be curriculum leader of the campus, but also needs to be a manager of things, processes, and people. One of the most important things to me came in the video from Dr. Kirk Lewis.  He stated that you should not do research for the sake of doing it, to satisfy someone at the district office or to have something for your resume.  Action research is meant to be practical to you and your specific campus to enhance student learning.  If it does not meet this criteria, why do it?

Week 1 Assignment

When I started this course, I did not know what action research was.  I just assumed it was what I was thinking of as traditional research.  I found out though that in action research, the results are more applicable to your individual campus because the research is done on site and in the classroom.  You are evaluating your own teaching techniques, styles, approaches to motivation and classroom management.  You are taking a topic, and evaluating its effectiveness in your own personalized setting, which is your classroom, school, or whatever the topic may lead to.  A very important aspect of this type of research is self-reflection.  One must take what he/she has learned from the project and give a true self judgement or reflection to change or tweek your style and make improvements.  You must ask yourself some questions like "What went well, what can I improve on, what did not go well, how did my students react, how can I change to get the message across to my students better, etc?"  The self reflection step is critical and necessary to take the information and apply the data to yourself and make changes.

Educators can use blogs in a variety of ways, but one will discuss is communication.  We could create a classroom blog and communicate with parents in this way versus a newsletter, for example.  The week's topics could be discussed, homework listed, dates assignments are due, etc.  You could also inform parents of upcoming important dates such as assessments, holidays, special events at campus, etc.  It would save time and paper of creating and printing a newsletter.