My 1st Action Research Plan

Action Research Inquiry / Planning Template 7.1 / Process Overview                                                                    

Background information leading to inquiry/Purpose

In our reading last week, I read about a school that had weekly school meetings. They treated this time to go over general information/expectations, have staff/student development, and recognize students/staff. The goal was to create a positive culture throughout the school. I have been talking with my students on how they feel about our school and its culture. I heard only negative things, so I knew we needed to improve our culture and work to increase our student’s achievement/engagement. I felt as if having meetings at least every other week would be beneficial at my school, but we are too large of a school to have our whole school fit into one place to meet.  Next year we are moving to academies where students are placed based on their career pathway. I felt as if it may be possible to have regular meetings with our academies. My supervisor thought this was a good idea, so we will be having at least two meetings a month with our whole academy (staff and students). The goal would be to create a positive school culture where students are engaged and motivated to succeed.

Sample using

I will be researching and collecting data on the academy that I am in. I am in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) Academy. These will be the students and teachers that I am interviewing and collecting data on.

Question/Subquestions

What role do bi-weekly academy meetings play in creating a positive and caring school culture?

• In what ways will the students and staff become more aware of positive things that are happening at our school?
• In what ways will bi-weekly academy meetings bring a positive culture back on to our campus?
• How will improving school culture motivate the students and staff to achieve and succeed in the classroom?
• How do the meetings improve student behavior?

Methods/Data Collection

• Field notes will be taken during the academy meetings to capture what is going on and jot down the staff and student reactions.
• Interviews will be conducted with students and staff of the academy.
• Artifacts will be collected. (emails, parent newsletters, correspondence to and from parents, meeting agendas…possibly more)
• Video may be taken at several meetings to observe nature of interactions and behavior.
• Weblog will be used recalling my personal experience and thoughts.
• Surveys will be conducted at various times throughout the year to get the perception of the students and staff members regarding the academy meetings and school culture.
• Correspondence will be collected from principals conducted walk-throughs to look for student engagement.

Data Analysis

• Ongoing

Timeline

May – Survey Staff and Students to get their opinion on our school culture, possible motivation techniques, and thoughts about having regular academy meetings.

June-August – Meet with Campus Improvement Committee / Principals to develop a plan of action and discuss meetings and agendas for the meetings

August – Staff development over new academies and the academy meetings…interview teachers to get their opinions

End of August / September – Begin academy meetings…write field notes and video first few meetings

October/November – Interview students and staff members to see how meetings are going…Is school culture changing? What else needs to be done? Re-evaluate plan/agenda if needed.

December-May – Continue to write in weblog, write field notes, and video at least once a month to document process. Keep any emails and artifacts that involve academy meetings. Conduct another survey to see how students and staff members feel about the meetings. (What we they like to see incorporated in to the meetings?) (Do they feel motivated? If not, what would help them feel motivated?) Look at student’s grades and test scores to see how they are changing. Continue to have principals looking at student engagement in the classrooms.

Action Planning Template (7.1)

SCHOOL VISION: New school vision focused on building a strong SHS culture where engaging, meaningful, creative learning can take place and where college and career readiness is emphasized.

GOAL:  To create a positive school culture where students are encouraged to be actively engaged in their classes through regular bi-weekly academy meetings that motivate students and staff.

Action Steps:	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Meet with leadership team and campus improvement committee to discuss academies and meetings (goal/agenda..etc.)	Principals / teachers	May 2013-ongoing	Background information, proof of positive influence to create buy in	Take field notes to document meetings, keep artifacts from meetings
Provide information to students, parents, and staff about academies and meetings	Principal	April / May 2013	Computers / way to communicate, documentation of success from other places to show the positive effects of meetings and academies	Conduct informal interviews to collect opinions from others. Conduct a survey after the information is given to get more opinions from a larger group.
Have Staff and student development to teach them the procedures	Principals / Improvement Committee	August / September 2013	Places to conduct development, tools needed to conduce (paper, utensils, computers..etc)	Interview staff and students to get their opinions, document field notes about staff development.
Begin academy meetings (these will be held at least twice a month)	Academy principals / counselors / coordinator / teachers / student	August 2013 – May 2014	Access to technology, funds, places to conduct meetings, possibly hire guest speakers	Take video to evaluate reactions… take field notes…keep artifacts (agendas, handouts..etc) Conduct survey to see how people are being motivated and to see if the culture has become more positive. May conduct two-three surveys throughout the year.
Principals conduct walk-throughs to document student engagement	Academy Principals	August 2013 – May 2014	Computers, documents, program for walk-through submission and viewing	Collect these to see if there is a trend between teachers, classes and student engagement

Process Overview:

1. Setting the foundation – Meet with the principals and campus improvement committee to discuss academies and having regular meetings with academies. Talk about the school vision and what needs to be done to meet the vision. How can we improve our school’s culture?
2. Analyzing data – Use a variety of data as well as electronic searches for articles and other schools that have academies and/or regular whole school or academy meetings. Other data may include surveys, field notes, video, and interviews. Findings might include different topics to include during meetings or motivational activities.
3. Developing deeper understanding – After gathering data, we will need to evaluate and possibly do more research or use a variety of different research strategies (as mentioned above). We will need to continuously meet to re-evaluate and tweak some items in the plan.
4. Engage in Self-Reflection – We will need to continuously self-reflect throughout the year. Are we using the skills and resources that are needed? Have our students and staff “bought into” the meetings? If not, what needs to be done? Has our school culture changed? What could we be doing differently? What are we doing right?
5. Exploring programmatic patterns – Meet with principals and improvement committee to discuss solutions and pros/cons of the possible solutions. Try to identify all the negatives before coming up with solutions.
6. Determining direction – This would be where we would double check everything before our plan goes into action. Have discussed and come up with all of the solutions to the problems. Are the timelines and agendas in place for the meetings. We need to be sure we have a plan to monitor the project and determining its level of success.
7. Taking action for school improvement – Be sure to have the plan written with steps.

Which Action Research Topic should I choose?

There are so many action research topics that need to be conducted at my school! I wish I had time to conduct all of them, but I know I do not. I had already decided on some topics that might be of importance before I read the chapter. I “knew” that I might want to focus on either Motivation or Parent involvement, but after reading the chapter, I have found some other topics as well. I have found four topics of interest that I would like to further look in to (some of them seem to correlate, so I may end up incorporating a couple once I decide). The four topics are parent involvement, motivation, career based curriculum, and support for new teachers. I feel that all of these are of up most importance at our school. I need to find which one will benefit our school (both staff and students) and will hit home for me the most! If I am not really interested, then it will not get its full potential to increase student learning and achievement (which is the number one goal at hand).

Before doing the chapter reading and learning more about the nine areas, I completed the discussion for the week. In order to complete the discussion and talk about what I was interested in completing my action research on, I did some research on the web. http://gse.gmu.edu/research/lmtip/arp/vol3/ was a website that I found very helpful. This website had an array of action research topics and examples from previous students and schools. The topics varied from general to parent involvement and motivation. I did not want to come up with an action research out of the blue, so I looked into what others had done.

There were a couple of articles on the site about how to improve student achievement by increasing parent involvement. I have had many parents contact me about how they are unaware of their student’s grades. We have a program for them to look at, but it has had many issues. Some parents do not even know about the program! A good question could be, how can increasing parent’s knowledge of their student’s grades affect student achievement? I have also tried to contact parents and been unsuccessful. (There is no working number, no email, and ultimately, no way of contacting them.) How could this change? I, also, have talked to some parents that say they can’t wait for their kid to turn 18 so they can be rid of them! This is scary that parents think this way, how could we change their way of thinking and get them on board? Maybe if they are aware of some of their student’s successes, they will be more encouraged to get involved. I feel as if a lot of parent contact is negative. Maybe we should contact parents when their children do something positive. Maybe have a dinner night at the school once a month…I’m not sure…I’m just throwing ideas out there that I have read on this topic that my school could benefit from.

The other topic that I got from the website was to do my action research project on motivation. Again, this is a very broad topic that I would need to further narrow down with my site supervisors. I’m not even sure if I should focus on motivating the staff or students or both. I truly feel that if there is no motivation to be successful, then we may not have any success. I hear my honors students say all of the time, that they are not cared about. “All we do is focus on the “bad” kids. We can’t have anything good because of them. We have no recognition for the students that are constantly doing what they are supposed to do.” This is sad! Eventually they are going to stop working too, because we are not doing anything to motivate them to continue to be “good.” Next year we are moving into academies at our school. I was thinking about having bi-weekly (twice a month) academy meetings/gatherings. We could honor students at these meetings for a variety of things (academics, athletics, attendance, behavior…etc.) How could these bi-weekly meetings help student achievement? When other students see their classmates getting rewarded, will they want to increase their achievement and be rewarded as well? We could even reward the teachers at these meetings. Maybe we could let the students pick students and teachers to be recognized. Just think of how the culture of the school could change if every person was recognized for doing something! I think I may be leaning towards this topic!

The next topic that I discovered by reading the chapter in our book is career-based curriculum. As I stated earlier, our school is moving into academies. These academies were put together according to the student’s career pathway. We are thinking of including their career interests into their classes. How can career-based curriculum help enhance student performance/achievement? This will take “buy in” from all of the teachers to work and may be more difficult to follow, but I am excited to see it in action. I could definitely follow it my classroom! I teach Spanish and will be in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) academy next year. I am planning on researching more about the topics (I am not that familiar or strong in any of them, hence why I teach Spanish!), but I would like to incorporate them into my curriculum next year. I wonder if my student’s grades will increase!

The fourth topic really hit home to me when I was reading it in the book. It was support for new teachers. As I discussed in Part 2 of the assignment, I had a very stressful first year of teaching. I thought about throwing myself down the stairs more than once and felt like there was no one or nothing there to help me! What helps new teachers succeed? I will definitely need to do more research and see what other schools do to help their new teachers. I would like to find a program and try to start it at my school for new teachers. I am a “blue” person, so I am constantly wanting to please everyone and do not want to see others struggle. I would like to start something that supports our new teachers. Maybe we won’t have such a high turnover rate next year!

I have so much to think about over the next week or so...Collapse this post

Action Research Projects: Vol. 3 - LMTIP »

Welcome to the Language Minority Teacher Induction Program · LMTIP Background and Introduction · Participating Schools Directory · Action Research Projects · Reference Materials · Project Evaluation ·...

Why educational leaders use blogs?

Again, I am in school studying Educational Administration, so my whole blog will be geared toward my degree.

Why should educational leaders use blogs? To me, this is very simple! To share, to share, to share, and/or to learn, to learn, to learn. By using blogs, you are able to share valuable information with other school leaders. Whether it be an article that interests you that you believe others may benefit from reading, or just to offer advice to others, blogs are an easy way to get that information out to people. I know I always turn to others for advice, so I plan on using blogs to learn! There is so many people out there that can offer advice. By using blogs, you are able to receive advice from countless people. Who knows, someone out there might have just the idea or advice or solution that you've been looking for! 

Action Research and it's uses

I am currently pursuing my Master's in Educational Administration at Lamar University and have been reading about action research in the educational setting. I have come to realize that I have done some action research without really knowing that I have. You see, action research is a process that involves self reflection and continuous learning. First, one points out an issue or concern that needs to be addressed. Then they come up with a series of questions that pin point the issue/concern. The person must do some research to learn more about the concern to help develop a plan to correct or improve the issue. Once the plan is developed, it goes into action. Afterwards, the person must reflect on if the plan worked (collect and analyze data..etc.) and most likely, tweak/revise that said plan. It is a continuous cycle where you are always looking at ways to improve or fix problems.

I stated that I had done a little of this without knowing, but I have not completely engulfed the idea continuously when it comes to my teaching, classroom, and students. Have I done some personal reflection and researched some areas that I, especially as a new/young teacher, needed work on? Why, yes! Have I come up with plans to help better myself as a teacher? Of course! I have not, however, taken the time to make sure I do this on a regular basis! I feel as if I get caught up in life in general, and do not focus on improving myself so that I am able to further improve my teaching and the student's learning!

There are a number of ways that I could use action research when it comes to teaching and being a principal. Obviously student learning and student achievement is why I entered in to this profession. It is my main focus. (Believe it or not, it was not because of June and July!) Some quick background info: I teach at a large high school in Texas that is very diverse. We have students from all different cultures, backgrounds, and economical levels. I feel as if I have problems with connecting with all of my students and getting everyone actively engaged in my class.

As a current teacher, I could research and look more into how others get their students engaged and learning. I'm sure I could discover a lot more techniques and activities. I also need to develop ways to reach all students and get to know them. (That might need to be the first step!)

In reality, I'm not sure how to do everything, but I do know that I am always willing to learn! I am always wanting to improve. I am always wanting to reach every student! I want them all to succeed; I just need to further learn how to make that happen!

Man, teaching is not easy and I'm sure being a school leader is not either! Maybe once I get this action research process down, it will help with all of the stress!