An Action Research Intro

          
                  Action research and traditional research methods can both be positive change agents in today’s education settings.  They both seek to solve problems through investigative actions and to target areas in need of improvement.  After reading the textbook and watching the Module 1 videos, I have come to appreciate the idea of action research.  This was a new concept I had never heard about before, but one I know that will serve me well in my years ahead in education.  In my opinion, the best quality of action research is being able to apply it directly to the school environment and to the work being done for students.  Moreover, it is an ongoing process.  The experience and information that is collected can then be used to make changes in the school system to seek improvement in any given area. (Mertler, 2019)

                My internship experience has been the best opportunity to start to think about what my action research project will be.  Talking to my school administrators about areas in our school that need improvement has been so helpful.  In fact, this last week I had the idea of improving school relationships between staff and students by implementing school “families”, but my admin helped pose a new school improvement for my project that I am very excited about!  It will involve training and improving the experience of first year teachers and new incoming staff members to our campus.  
 
                When looking at what stage I am in based off the 4 Stages of action research, I am currently still in the planning stage.  I have limited my topic to improvements for new/incoming teachers, but am still gathering information and starting to explore related literature that discusses my topic.  My goal this next week is to continue to build my project in Stage 1 and have my overall plan.  To be honest, I am not sure which step will be the most difficult for me. 
All in all, action research is motivating and inspirational because it is a way to directly impact your own campus with any improvement.  In fact, even if an area is explored for improvement, it could be discovered that necessary changes are not needed.  In the end, the whole process is investigative into what is going to work and not work for any particular campus, and action research truly gives you the freedom to do so.

Resources

Mertler, C. (2019). Action research. Sage Publications, Inc.

Sage Edge (n.d.) Video 1.2. [Video]. Sage Publications, Inc. https://edge.sagepub.com/mertler5e/student-resources/chapter-1/video-resources

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