Review #3 Lee1/5

Miha Lee
Professor Rivas
SED 600
11 April 2007

Reflection on Action Research Presentations

Although I took a credential course in a college of education, those theories and

applications in literature I had learned offered me little in the way of keeping my
students engaged or gauging how many of my lessons led to serious learning because at
that time I didn’t realized their meaning and importance in my future teaching. However,
my attitude changed when I have accumulated teaching experiences in high schools. I
wanted to know more about the effective teaching and learning process. This is the
main reason for taking this course, but I still feel the need to apply my learning to my
teaching to test the usefulness of those theories. Action research provides an
opportunity to implement my learning into my teaching practice. In addition, action
research gives me a chance to reflect on my own practices and the proficiencies of my
students with an eye toward what works and what doesn’t. (Ferrance, 2000) Thus,
action research contributes to the development of my knowledge and skills about
teaching and learning.
On the other hand, isolation is one of the downsides of teaching. Teachers are often
the sole adult in a room of children, and have little or no time scheduled for professional
conversations with others. (Johnson, 2007) However, one of the basic principles of
action research is that researcher need others’ ideas for stimulation and depend on
other people’s perspectives to enrich one’s own. (Ferrance, 2000) In this sense, the
presentations that were made and will be made in our course allow us to learn from
watching other people’s experiences and share my experience with other teachers. The
presentations offered me an insight into my own action research and helped me to
organize my research project.

The most interesting thing in the presentations was the research topics that the
people chose: metacognition, web-based homework, and the nature of science. Those
topics made me think about the purpose of doing action research. Obviously, action
research is used as a professional development. However, as a ‘science’ teacher, I need
to focus my research on the effective way of ‘science’ teaching and learning process.
Every teacher has a problem of improving one’s teaching practice, but particularly these
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days when students tend to avoid taking science courses, the role of science teachers is
critical in motivating their students to want to know more about science and helping
their students build understanding of science knowledge. Therefore, I need to choose a
topic with regard to the improvement in science education. What is more, another
purpose of action research is to bridge the gap between theory and practice. (Johnson,
2007, p32-33) Action research helps me put some of my learning to the test. The topics
of the presentations were from their learning in the same program as I have been
taking, and suggested a way to use those topics in my teaching. Thus, the presentations
were a valuable chance to learn about the methods of science education as well as
action research.
For my action research topic, I already decided ‘guided inquiry as a teaching
strategy’. My interest has been in the effective method of teaching chemistry since I
became a chemistry teacher. Chemistry deals with microscopic world to explain the
macroscopic phenomena, which cause students to have difficulty learning chemistry. I
really want to help my students understand the concepts of chemistry by using effective
ways of teaching chemistry. During the course, I have found that the constructivism and
the inquiry-based teaching help teaching and learning process effectively take place in
a science classroom. Thus, I will make a plan to test these theories in my practice, and
this action research process also will enable me to improve my teaching skills.

When planning action research, it is vital to review literature of professional

researchers. The purpose of the review is to set a research topic in a theoretical
context and to lend credibility to a research design. (Johnson, 2007, p.75, 77) Finding
and reading research articles that are relevant to my research topic can bring a new
perspective and experience into my work. While academic research is seen as
disconnected from the our daily lives, it can be very helpful for teachers to pick up
ideas suggested in authentic Journal articles, and incorporate them into our own
classroom. (Ferrance, 2000) I don’ think those presenters began the designs of their
researches from the scratch. They gave us the lists of their literature reviewed, that is,
theoretical frameworks. Lyle provided us with literature review in detail about the
importance of homework, acceptance of web-based applications in education and the
use of web-based homework delivery and submission applications. The presence of
literature review in his presentations helped us to understand the purposes of those
researches and helped legitimize those works. Especially, it was impressive that Schus
offered the list of reviewed literature with clarifying the sources. I may read many
articles and find some of them are interesting and useful for my action research.
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However, I need to classify the articles to each of themes in my research topic.

Personally, the most difficult step in action research is to design the actions or
tools that are used in the research because this step requires creativity of researchers.
Schus’ idea of using objectives list as a tool to develop metacognitive skills was the
best part of his research. When he showed a sample of the objectives list and a
completed list with his data collecting method, I learned that I should figure out my own
research tools. Also, Kipfel’s techniques, which were used to explicitly teach the nature
of science, were unique. However, Lyle’s use of commercial provider of web-based
homework services is not creative, and he didn’t make those questions of the
homework. If he had used his own website and his own creative homework, his
research would have been more valuable.
In my research, I will design a series of guided inquiry activities in which my
students will learn about the unit on metal. I can’t create new experimental methods, but
I will employ conventional activities to design guided inquiry activities by modifying and
rearranging them to promote students’ investigations and conceptual changes. Actually,
I did this all the time, but this time the design will be more theoretical based and
systematic. Furthermore, I will find out the effectiveness of my designs and their
implementation to improve those activities.

The next question in the process of action research is to make a plan for data
collection. (Johnson, 2007) Actually when we consider conducting an action research,
we already know the students as an experimental group and the time when the action
will be taken. However, researchers should establish an action plan and timetable for
data collection because planning data collection decides what action needs to be taken.
(Ferrance, 2000, Johnson, 2007) The presenters offered us their data collection method
in a form of ‘Time and Place’, ‘Methodology’ and ‘How Results were Obtained’. Some of
them allowed us to grasp the methodology in their research, but most of data collecting
methods were explained by the results and findings. Before establishing my timetable
for data collection, I should look over the unit and the semester plan to decide which
subunits are required to do inquiry activities. I am still working on the question; how
structured and systematic will the collection be?

And most importantly, multiple sources of data are used to better understand the
scope of happenings in the classroom or school. (Ferrance, 2000) We need to use at
least two data sources (triangulation) as evidences to back up our claims in the
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discussion and conclusion in our action research. Triangulation means looking at

something from more than one perspective. (Johnson, 2007, p.101-102) All of the
presenters gave us at least two kinds of data. One is directly from the results of actions
such as objectives lists, homework analysis and pre-post tests comparison of NOS
concepts. The other is indirectly from the activities such as survey to assess the
students’ attitude toward those activities.
During the research, I will collect the lap papers that students will report their
observations and give their explanations to the observations. And I will carry out pre-
post test to measure the changes in conceptions about metal. Also, I will conduct a
survey that asks for the students’ views on whether my strategies help them to learn
the concept of metal and its usefulness in their lives.

Presenting the results and findings asks researchers to select the data that are
most appropriate for the issue being researched and to organize the data in a way that
makes it useful to identify trends and themes. (Ferrance, 2000) Surprisingly, those data
in the presentations were quantitative, not qualitative data. They show graphs, tables,
and correlations values to evidence their conclusions. Schus’s study was about the
metacognitive learning, and he showed us the change of predictive ability from the first
chapter to the last chapter using correlation value comparison. It was a good example of
quantitative analysis. While such numbers and graphs make the finding of trends and
patterns easy, I wanted to know more about their questions in the tests and surveys to
understand the meaning of the researches. In fact, every authentic research article
provides a context for its data, sometimes including a diagram of the investigation set
up. In this sense, Lyle’s analysis of survey was the best part of his research
presentation. In his presentation, he introduced each question and its responses.
My data will be both quantitative and qualitative. For my qualitative data that are
not quantifiable, I need to review holistically to code important elements or themes from
the data. Then, I will summarize the coded data in tabular form for each question from
answers in the lap paper and opinions and attitudes in the survey. In addition to the
table, I will develop conceptual maps for representative data to find the trends of
conceptual change throughout the inquiry activities. I also present my quantitative data
in written, tabular and graphical form to compare the results from the pre and posttest.

Final step of the presentation was to assess the effects of the intervention to
determine if improvement has occurred. (Ferrance, 2000) If there is improvement,
researcher should ask the question; do the data clearly provide the supporting
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evidence? If no, what changes can be made to the actions to elicit better results? This
was the part of conclusion, recommendation, and limitation. In conclusion, only Lyle
admitted that there was no significant change in student achievement attributable to the
use of Web-based homework. The other two presenters concluded that their
researches achieved intended goals. However, the goal of action research is not to
prove anything, but to understand. (Johnson, 2007) Therefore, Lyle’s study has its own
meaning and his survey results supported the other merits of using web-based
homework. The presenters also suggested limitation of their research and application of
the results to other class situations. We hope that as a result of our action research
project, we can identify additional questions raised by the data and plan for additional
improvements, revisions, and next steps.

Action research can be a worthwhile pursuit for educators for a number of reasons.
Foremost among these is simply the desire to know more. Good teachers are, after all,
themselves students, and often look for ways to expand upon their existing knowledge.
(Ferrance, 2000) We will learn a lot from the process as well as the results of our own
action research. Also, by doing our own action research we could gain a better
perspective into our own teaching and the students’ learning and confidence in our
work.
However, doing action research still seems to be challenging. Although Johnson’s
book helped us be encouraged, these presentations guided me to find my way of doing
action research by showing the extent to which their researches covered.

Reference
Ferrance, E., 2000, Action Research, Northeast and Islands Regional Educational
Laboratory At Brown University, Providence, RI, Retrieved March 30, 2007 from
http://www.alliance.brown.edu/pubs/themes_ed/act_research.pdf
Johnson, A, P. (2007) A Short Guide to Action Research (3rd edition), Boston, MA:
Pearson Allyn and Bacon.
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The action research planner (3rd ed.). Victoria,
Australia: Deakin University Press.
Watts, H. (1985). When teachers are researchers, teaching improves. Journal of Staff
Development, 6 (2), 118-127.