Decisions, Decisions

I am in the process of moving to a new school. That being said, I’ve had to find a new site mentor, examine my new campus’ vision, and really discuss what the areas of concern are at my new campus. I have been emailing quite a bit with my new site mentor about my action research and possible topics for this project. Initially, I spoke to her about one of my ideas for research, and she gave me two additional topics to consider. These initial ideas were:

1. Including a “tutorial” time within the school day and how scheduling could be changed to incorporate this.
2. Look at literacy and impact on science scores
3. Effectiveness of reading courses on all academics

When talking further, she said “Literacy and writing are some campus wide goals that we are focusing on so that might be an option for you. We are going to implement a campus wide vocabulary program and increase our focus on writing across all curriculum areas. You could always look at how a focus on literacy impacts performance in non ELA courses.” 

So, the final thing we agreed upon as a topic is: “How does a focus on literacy impact performance in non ELA courses?”.

I think this will be a great adventure, it seems like an interesting topic, and they have already got the ball rolling on incorporating new practices. I am hoping this opens the door to the process of gathering data for my action research plan! Maybe things will fall into place.

Beginnings of Action Research

Wow, action research has been an exciting thing to begin! At first, I was overwhelmed about the entire idea. However, after reading and researching what I'm getting myself into, I've changed more into excited and eager to get to work.

My first questions were what is action research? What is the "action" part? How is different that research that I'm familiar with? Basically, action research takes the ability of reflection on my current practices and the practices within my school and created a change from the outside in. 

Action research follows this plan:

1. inquiry 

2. data collection 

3. analysis of data 

4. implementing change

Action research begins with wonderings, ideas, concerns, and thoughts, blossoms from there into data collection and reflection, and then allows from improvement, expansion, and growth.

There are a ton of ways that I could use action research, as an educator and an administrator. For this course, I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to research, yet. I have a few ideas. My first idea is concerning tutorial time at school and how to make this more effective. My other two ideas are on a much smaller scale. I would like to look at literacy and impact on science scores, or effectiveness of reading courses on all academics.

Journaling and/or blogging are great ways to capture thinking and create a reference for reflection. As time goes on, and inquiry develops into something more, I will be able to track the thought process and see the change over time through looking back at these blogs. Also, this is a great way to share my inquiries and work with other administrators and colleagues and receive their feedback.