Week 5- "What have I learned?"

     Action research is significantly different than the research I competed as an undergraduate finance and marketing major.  Traditional research is reading what experts in the field think and then trying to understand how you can use their concepts and ideas to further your understanding.  Action research is the process of inquiry and self-reflection in order to better understand the situation or world around you.  Action research is especially important in the career as an educational administrator.  It can be used to make any part of your school more efficient and effective in order to increase student achievement. 

     I learned that blogs are very effective way to communicate with students, staff, and stakeholders.  Blogs can also be used as an online discussion.  They can be used as an information board, but are extremely effective to show the process of inquiry of a change to our campus.  Administrators can also make blogs open to gain insight from stakeholders to collaborate ideas with others action researchers.  There are many ways that blogs can help gain insight and increase collaboration during the action research process and increase communication in my campus.  I plan to create a blog for my wrestling team and classroom along with my action research project. 

    The administrator interviews were very helpful to understand how others have used action research to increase student achievement on their campuses.  Dr. Timothy Chargios said to never stop learning.  He also spoke about how there are always things that can be done better when we are examining a topic for action research.  As long as the end result will increase student learning, it is a great topic for action research.  This idea was very interesting to me.  All campuses have specific ways of doing things, but if examined further, many times there are ways of doing it that can make a greater impact on our students. 

     The discussion board and peer comments on our blog were extremely helpful in our process of action research.  I was able to see others’ action research process and gain insight to develop my own research plan.  Mrs. Guy and Mrs. Klemen both commented about how I would evaluate my results.   I realized that there might not be a quantitative answer to my action research project.  This took a lot of reflection to answer.  I can, however, by surveying, doing walk-throughs, and group discussions, understand how having focused tutorials can have a positive affect on the staff, campus culture, and our students academic achievement.  I also did not think of including parents’ input.  Based on Mrs. Stephens’ comment, I plan on offering the survey to parents during report card pick up and putting a link on our home page to also receive feedback from our stakeholders.  This process of peer evaluation has helped me to not only analyze my research but also add activities and other opportunities for action research in my internship plan and administration career.  

     My action research plan has been a continued discussion with my site supervisor, who is also my campus principal.  I feel that this has helped me gain respect and helped me to collaborate with our administrative team.  I have been able to gain his insight and include ideas of my own on how we are going to evaluate the successfulness of our focused tutorials program.  This has also giving me insight into how change is implemented and discussed as an administrator.