Week Two Actions

This week was very informative and had lots of information. We listened to three remarkable administrators about action research. These scholars were very insightful and had a lot of great information about action research. During our reading this week we learn about nine passions that drive your journey with action research. The nine passions are: staff development, curriculum development, individual teachers, individual students, school cultural/community, leadership, management, school performance, and social justice. This passion made me look over my own thoughts and made me wonder about being a principle. Many times we need to have several action projects going at the same time or constantly looking at several throughout the year. Then after that we talked with our site supervisor about topics for action research. The three topics I took to my supervisor was Pre-K for 3 year olds, cell phone usage, and RTI. The one that we both thought would benefit our school district and staff would be the cell phone usage. As a district we are looking at throwing out our policy on cell phones and letting students use them at school. My supervisor would like to do more research on the advantages and disadvantages of a new policy for our campus. What steps or precautions can we make ensure students can use their smart phone on campus and still have control over their educational needs?

What is Action Research??

Action Research is very new to me, but over this week I have learned a lot about it. I have learned that as many things as we have going on with school, most of us have probably used some kind of action research as a teacher. I just have not known I was using it for many years. Being in special education has given me this chance because, I work daily with students that I have to research how to reach these children. Many of us as educators have probably used it in some form or fashion. Action research is ongoing, data driven, tested, and always on the mind you might say. Action research is a topic that should always be on an educator’s mind and definitely on the administrator’s mind. Action research is definitely different from any other research because the person doing the research is an insider and they know the situations first hand. Normally a researcher that is doing plain research is an outsider looking in on the situation. That is what makes action research so unique and interesting. It is something that you might be passionate about or curious about learning more about. I look forward to learning more about action research and how to use on daily basics.

How might educators use a blog?

There are many ways an educator can use a blog. One way would be to get information from other teachers across the sea or country. This would be a great idea for administrators to help each other out about situations or problems they are having at their school. This would be a great way to get input and find out what worked for another school district. This would be a great tool to bounce ideas off different school districts.