Action Research Reflection

EDLD 5301 has been quite an eye-opening course. I had known just how much an administrator or other educational leader might face on a daily basis, but this course also helped to drive home the idea that a school leader should be the head learner on their campus.

During the start of the course we were taught about the idea of action research. I wrote the following reflection in my blog:

"Administrative inquiry or action research is the process by which an administrator systematically assesses and affects change within their campus. It includes the collection and analyzing of pertinent data and a continued effort to monitor how effective the resulting changes are. Dana notes that this method lends itself to the overall professional development of principals (2009). The main difference between action research and traditional educational research is that with action research the principal (and anyone else included in the inquiry) are active participants. With traditional educational research administrators are given a set of data or curriculum which they are intended to implement and troubleshoot. This means that administrators have little or no role in the research they are being presented with and expected to carry out (Dana, 2009). In contrast, administrative inquiry is generated by the campus' administrators themselves and is specific to the needs of that particular campus.

I can think of a couple of different ways I can use action research on my own campus within the next year. I was recently put in charge of a committee which will be responsible for making changes to our campus' week of back-to-school activities this coming August. This basically amounts to a leadership team and one in which our principal will also participate. I plan on using the committee to examine what various teachers think are the most important aspects of our program and begin making changes that would be more beneficial to both our students and teachers."

A large portion of this course was devoted to developing and refining an action research project which we would conduct on our own over the next several months. I found that this was an excellent opportunity to look at my campus from a new perspective. During the second and third weeks of the course I met with my administrators to discuss possible areas that were ripe for inquiry.

During our second meeting we reached a consensus about what I would be looking into. I wrote the following in my blog after that meeting:

"I think I'll focus on our campus' first week welcome-back program in which we sort of get students to focus down, settle in, and get ready for the year. Traditionally this week has been completely non-academic and instead focuses on character-building, get-to-know-you activities, and games at the end of the week. The students seem to really like it, but I think that the staff has mixed feelings about it. Fortunately my principal is letting me head the committee for this week for the next school year. I think that there will be plenty of opportunity for some meaningful research during my time as committee chair."

I have since refined this idea into one problem statement which is " Will modifying our back to school program (Wrangler Ropes) from the standard of previous years lead to a more positive school culture?" I have already put many hours into this research and have been getting great feedback from other teachers and have been able to use information I have learned from this course as well as the previous course EDLD 5311.

To sum up this course I would say that it has helped me to understand the crucial nature of action research on my campus. It is through this method that I will be able to help continually improve not only our campus, but also myself as a lifelong learner.