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Margaret Farren |
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Computer Applications |
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Dublin City University |
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Pair
work activity |
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Action
Research cycle |
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What is
Action Research? |
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Context: Developing teaching and learning |
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Methodologies |
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Kemmis |
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Whitehead |
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Case
study |
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Web
resources and bibliography |
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Part one: |
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One person talk to partner about something in
your teaching practice that you have
worked on to improve. |
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Other person listens to see if they can understand what the values are
that are motivating them to improve. |
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Feedback from pair work. |
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Part two |
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Focus on claims made about improvement. |
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Focus on kind of data required to enable you to
make a judgement on the effectiveness of the actions taken. |
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Practitioner based research |
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Systematic enquiry made public (Stenhouse, |
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Improving student learning |
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Developing teacher as learner |
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Enquiry made public |
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Values/criteria in Action Research |
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Living our values/criteria in our professional
practice – you need to be clear about what you are doing and why your are
doing it. |
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Empowering us as teachers to bring about
improvement. (Praxis versus techne.) |
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Teaching as a form of enquiry, leading to
knowledge and understanding of practice. |
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Developing awareness of practice by being
critical of practice. |
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Helping to bring about a more
participatory/collaborative view of teaching and learning. |
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Cyclical or spiral process which alternates
between action and critical reflection |
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Continuously refining methods, data and
interpretation in the light of the understanding developed in the earlier
cycles. |
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An emergent process which takes shape as
understanding increases; it is an iterative process which converges
towards a better understanding of what happens. |
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Participative (among other reasons, change is
usually easier to achieve when those affected by the change are involved)
and qualitative. |
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Review current practice |
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Identify aspect worth investigating |
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Imagine a way forward |
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Try it out |
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Take stock |
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Modify in light of what we find |
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Monitor |
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Review |
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Evaluate |
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Whitehead (
) formulated action reflections cycles into these statements: |
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What am I concerned about/what do I want to
improve; |
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What am I going to do about it |
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What data will I need to collect to enable me to
make a judgement on my effectiveness |
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Act and gather dat |
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Evaluation of effectiveness |
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Modification of concerns, ideas and actions in
the light of evaluations |
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Submission of descriptions and explanation of my
learning in the educational enquiry, ‘How do I improve my practice?’ to w
validation group. |
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Goals cannot be separated from values. |
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The things you believe are important (values)
become your criteria. |
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In the process of clarifying the meanings of
your embodied values, as they emerge in practice your transform your values
into your criteria (standards). |
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You can share your living standards with others. |
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They are living because they can change during
your enquiry. |
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To show that you are living your values in
practice you must produce data to meet the criteria. When these pieces of data meet the
criteria they become evidence. |
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Evidence is used in your research account when
you make w claim tht you have improved learning. |
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Two processes involved in following these steps: |
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Systematic actions as you work through steps |
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Your actions embody your learning and your
learning is informed by your reflections on your actions. |
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Questions of the type; |
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‘What am I doing?’ |
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‘Why am
I doing it?’ |
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Give a living form to an educational enquiry. |
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How do I improve what I am doing? |
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How do I live my values more fully in my
practice? (Whitehead, 1993) |
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Collecting data |
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Analysing data |
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Synthesing data |
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Validation |
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Learner |
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Self |
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Peer |
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Notes