Created: February 2, 2006
Last Modified: February 5, 2008
John Munro and Brenda Dalheim, Studies in Exceptional Learning and Gifted Education, Melbourne Graduate School of Education
The process is continuous, evolving, and complex. As each set of activities is completed, the participants "find themselves working backward through the routines, repeating processes, revising procedures, rethinking interpretations, leapfrogging steps or stages, and sometimes making radical changes in direction" (Stringer, 1996, p. 17). It is based on constructivist models that see teachers pursuing actively their own questions, building upon their own knowledge base, and interacting within a social environment. They need opportunities to reflect critically on their practice to construct new knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy, and learners (Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin, 1995) and to engage in "activities such as action research, conversations with peers about the beliefs and assumptions that guide their instruction, and reflective practices such as journal keeping" (Sparks & Hirsh, 1997, p. 11). The main steps on an action research project Consider the following problems in reading . Tina has low self confidence as a reader and you think this is holding her back. . Peter has problems understanding what he reads, particularly when there a few pictures and you want to improve this. . Karen has difficulty recalling what she has learnt about words she has read in earlier sessions. You decide that you want to target and reduce each of these problems. A technique you can use to do this in a systematic way is called 'action research'. 1. Identify the problem to be targeted by the teaching. It is useful to describe as clearly and as specifically as you can what the problem is. Sometimes it helps to imagine what the situation would be like, what the person would be doing if the problem didn't exist. Try to separate or distinguish the problem from related problems. Tina may have low self esteem in other areas as well. She may have few friends. While these are related problems, it is important to recognise them as peripheral to the action research if you are not intending to target them directly by the intervention you are putting in place. Your first step is to 'unpack' the general problem into a specific, particular issue that you will target. To help you do this you can use the model of reading we have developed. 2. Generate possible reasons why the problem is arising. Describe each reason from a teaching /intervention perspective. Tina may lack self esteem as a reader because in the past she . didn't see her successes, see what she could do, she was too ready to make negative statements about herself . didn't get positive feedback that suited her . didn't look for positive feedback. To help here you can . discuss the problem and possible reasons with colleagues, literacy advisers, special education consultants. What has caused similar problems been solved in the past? . consult data bases, journals, texts on reading. Note that these are possible solutions; you haven't checked or 'validated' them yet. 3. Identify possible interventions that you think might work. To do this you can . discuss the problem and possible solutions with colleagues, literacy advisers, special education consultants. How have similar problems been solved in the past? Has X been likely to work in this situation? . consult data bases, journals, texts on reading. Tina's self esteem as a reader might improve if she . received positive feedback that suited her more often . read easier text . sat next to other children in the class reflected more often on what worked for her as she read 4. Sharpen your possible solutions, select one that links the problem with the solution, the problem will be less / reduced if ............., for example: if the teacher helps Tina to monitor her progress at the end of each reading session by reflecting on the parts of the text she read well, her self esteem as a reader will improve This is what you predict might happen, that is, your hypothesis. 5. Write your solution as an intervention: . what you, the teacher will do, for example, you will ask Tina, at the end of each reading session, to look back over the text and note the parts she read well. . what the student will do, for example, Tina, at the end of each reading session, says "I will look back over text I have read and note the bits I read well". Again use the resources that we mentioned earlier to help here, for example . use our teaching models discuss the problem and possible reasons with colleagues, literacy advisers, special education consultants. What has caused similar problems been solved in the past? . consult data bases, references, Internet, journals, texts on reading. 3. Independent and dependent variables The innovation that you will use to produce the change is called the independent variable. The behaviour that will change as a result of this is called the dependent variable. Possible independent and dependent variables for the three examples above are:
6. Describe how you will contextualise the intervention . how will it be done in the classroom? . when will you do it (when during the literacy activity, does the student have difficulty)? . how will you scaffold the child's learning for the intervention? . how will you cue the child to do it? . how will you deal with information load issues, for example, introduce the intervention in the least mentally demanding situation initially? . how you will pass gradual control over to the child? . how will you see what the child already knows? 7. Describe the steps you will take to control or manage the intervention: What is your implementation action plan? How will you ensure that you implement the intervention as effectively as possible? Will you practise it with colleagues first to identify 'bugs'? Will you try to automatise what you will do so that when you implement it with the student you can focus on how the child responds? Will you try it out with good readers first? Taking care of other factors. In most learning situations, improvement is not due to just one factor. Other things can influence the skill that you are targeting. These can give you false impression of how effective your intervention has been. These are called 'confounding variables'. You need to identify these as much as you can and to control them. How can you be really sure that it is your intervention that is having the effect you want? What other factors could have an impact on what you are wanting the child to improve in? What other things could also explain improvement in the child's ability? What things could lead you to form an inaccurate or incorrect impression of the effectiveness of the intervention? What other factors do you need to control so that you can get an accurate impression of the IV? 8. Decide how you will describe the changes in the student's ability, both as the research continues and when you have finished it. There are three aspects of this. . the change in skill, knowledge or ability needs to be observable. You need to be able to see the changes and to measure them in some way. Ask yourself "What will the child be doing if the intervention works? What will the child be doing 'more of'? To do this you need to ask yourself "What will I be measuring to see whether change or improvement is happening". You may be measuring word reading accuracy, the number of comprehension questions, the level of text read with 95 % accuracy, attitude to reading, etc. Tina may show more confidence by taking risks when she reads or initiate reading herself. Often when you are describing how a person's ability or knowledge has changed, you want to do this in numbers. This is where you are measuring what the person knows or can do. There are different ways of measuring a change in skill or knowledge. Often when we read we measure how much of a text a person reads accurately or understands. Tina may comprehend 80 % of the questions while Peter may comprehend 60 %. This type of measurement is called 'interval' measurement. It tells us 'how much'. This type of measurement is used to describe reading performance on the Neale Analysis and to describe reading accuracy on texts at different levels. A second way of describing what a person knows about reading is not to say how much, but where they came, in order. We would say that Tina comprehended more than Peter. This type of measurement is called 'ordinal' measurement. It tells us 'where in the order each person is'. When a test gives you reading scores in percentile ranks, it is using ordinal measurement.
A third way of describing what a person knows about reading is to have a set of categories and put each person in one of them. If you had the 3 categories good reader, average reader and poor reader, you could put Tina in the good reader category and Peter in the average reader category. What you can do then is to compare how people in the different categories differ. This type of measurement is called nominal or categorical measurement. It tells you the category to which each person belongs. When you are doing research you may need to know about each way of describing what a person knows or how their knowledge or ability changes. . the conditions under which the student will show the skill. You need to state the contexts and conditions under which you will measure the person showing the skill. You may decide to measure Tina's confidence when she is reading texts that interest her or texts that she has already read. . how often the person needs to show the ability or behaviour. To decide whether a student has the knowledge, you need to decide whether you expect them to show it on every occasion, on half of the possible occasions, etc. Examples of types of data that you can collect
9. Develop your action plan. Show how you will progress to your goal. By now you have decided the intervention strategy you will research, how you will implement it and how you will describe how learning progress. What you need to do now is to combine these into an action plan. When you write your action research project, note . how you will decide where each child is now in terms of your measuring stick. how you will describe the student's entry level knowledge and ability . what you will look for as each child progresses to the goal . what you will look for . how you will record the changes. 10. Run a pilot research study. You do this to try out the things you intend to do, the data you intend to collect, etc. Select one or two students and try out a small part of your intervention procedures. Note how easy it is in the real life context to see changes in behaviour. 11. Implement the intervention What you do here is to generate information or data about how students respond to the intervention, to gather it, explore and evaluate it in an on-going way. As you implement the intervention you may need to describe each phase, in a 'dynamic journal': . what you actually do in each session, the teaching procedures you use. . the teaching conditions you put in place, the materials you use. . what the students do, both the abilities /behaviours you predicted and any abilities you didn't predict . any unexpected or unanticipated behaviours or outcomes. . any benefits, problems and hurdles you experienced, how you dealt with them. During the intervention, be prepared to question events that occur. You may need to look at your interpretation from different perspectives. . data you collected, how you measured progress, reviewed student gains. You can record . what things have 'gone up' . how well student does something, the complexity of the text to which the child applies the ability . how often the student displays the gains . how automatically the student applies the ability . how spontaneously the student applies the ability . any modifications, changes you needed to make to your teaching, the conditions, the data you collected, if you are targeting improvement in student self management of procedures and increased independence, how you rate / measure it. . how you debriefed, what you will do in the next session, how each session or step fits within your pathway. Throughout the research process you need to decide when enough data has been gathered. The data collection and the analysis phases overlap so that thoughts regarding the meaning of the data begin to emerge during the process, not just after it. You need to search for meaning by coding the collected data and developing categories to describe and organize themes presented in observations, diary notes, interviews, and other materials. In collaborative action research projects, teachers and university researchers may analyze data together. Such interaction adds another important dimension of reflection to the research process. 12. Review / evaluate the success of the intervention. As you do this, make sure you distinguish between what actually took place rather than what you think about what is took place. The action researcher makes decisions about teaching and learning based on the results of the study. You reflect on your work, document your reflections and decisions. These contribute to the knowledge base of teaching. 13. Write a report that documents the intervention, what was done, the indicators of student progress, the outcomes, how you would recommend it being used in the future, for whom. Make sure you say why the research should interest others and inform their understanding. Go beyond describing your specific experience to a generalization which would help others to apply it to their own experience. Present the intervention with the underlying rationale. A flow chart for your action plan Use the following flow chart to develop your action plan for an intervention
A flow chart for your action plan Use the following flow chart to develop your action plan for a diagnostic tool
4. The language of action research As you have seen from the above, action research, like any other discipline, has its own set of concepts and language. Have a go at giving examples of each of the following concepts and then say what each one means.
Action Research report guidelines 5. Writing a Hypothesis
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