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 ·...