Author: Richard A. Schmuck
Year : 2006
Publisher : Corwin Press
State : California, US
Schmuck, R. A. 2006. Practical action research for change (2nd ed.). California: Corwin Press.
To begin an action research, one needs to reflect one’s practice because action research is about reflecting own action to make a thing better.
REFLECTING ON PAST
- think about the past
- help one gain competence, mastery, and understanding which serve as your foundation of psychological strength when facing the next challenge or same event.
REFLECTING ON FUTURE
- reflect the future thing
- doing lesson plan, imagine, preparing what will happened in the future
REFLECTING ON PRESENT
- monitor other person’s reactions to one actions and quickly regulate what one say or do next, according to the instant insight one get about other’s changing mental state.
- requires one to be sensitive and insightful about the nonverbal reactions of participants
Concern on improving in achieving results or reaching valued outcomes, following ten stages help one to move from reflection to action research.
Stage 1: Assess the situation
Stage 2: Set clear goals
Stage 3: Brainstorming action strategies
Stage 4: Implement action plans
Stage 5: Monitor your own actions
Stage 6: Assess other’s reactions
Stage 7: Evaluate what others have learned
Stage 8: Confront yourself with the results
Stage 9: Reflect on actions to take next
Stage 10: Assess the new situation and set new goals
Action research can be said as a formal investigation into oneself or into one's social system to improve one's action. Beside it is conducted to see how others affected by researcher. Therefore, researcher (teacher) conducts the action research to study his/her actions so that his/her future actions will be more effective.
Teacher need to do action research to:
-understand how others see and how are they affected by teacher.
-find out how teacher should practice differently to be more effective.
-improve teacher’s professional judgement.
-give teacher insight (ability to see and understand the truth about something) into how better to achieve the educational goals.
Action research consists of self-reflective inquiry (internal and subjective) and inquiry-oriented practice (external and data based).
It unfolds to a spiral cycles: reflecting, planning, acting, data collecting, analyzing, reflecting, planning, acting, data collecting, analyzing and so on until the achieve one's goal.
Action research is:
Practical – Practical change will be occurred immediately after the inquiry.
Participative – Both researcher and samples work together.
Empowering – Researchers and samples can influence and contribute equally to the research.
Interpretive – Social reliabilities of situation are determined collaboratively by pooling participants’ perceptions and attitudes during the inquiry.
Tentative – Inquiry result in tentative solutions based on participants’ diverse views.
Critical – Research can be act as self-critical change agents.
a) Proactive action research
Data are collected and analyzed after action is taken.
Data are collected and analyzed before action is taken.
2. Sample/ Participants
- students
- parents
- colleagues
- staff members
3. Setting
- School
- Classroom
PROCEDURES OF ACTION RESEARCH
Researcher follow the below procedures to obtain data:
a. asking questions (by using questionnaires, interview and academic test)
b. observing behaviours (with an objective plan and systematic procedure)
c. using existing data gathered by someone else (public documents, census information and school records)
DATA COLLECTING & ANALYSING
1. Research Instruments
The primary instruments are questionnaires, interview, observation, academic tests, and documents.
a) Questionnaires (inventories, opinionnaires, surveys)
- Ask for facts, feelings, thoughts or behaviours.
- Can be simple and complex
- Can be open ended or have rating scale
Questionnaires are most useful to:
- announce the start of a responsive action research project
- understand students’ subjective states, their perceptions, ideas, feelings, cognitions, attitudes and values
- Quantify students’ responses
- Have all students respond to the same statements at the same time
- Collect a lot of data in a short time
- Allow students to be anonymous
b) Interview formats
- Oral conversations (interviewers asks questions to interviewees)
One-on-One Informal Interviews
- Seek relaxed and spontaneous conversations with individual students to uncover their perceptions, thoughts and attitudes.
- Do not record informal conversation.
- Ask only a few questions.
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Smile a lot, talk little and seek empathy.
Focus Group Informal Interviews
- Same as One-on-One Informal Interviews
- Chat with a group of peers about their opinion.
One-on-One formal Interviews
- Develop a logical list of unambiguous questions and try them out on a few respondents before starting the formal interview (pilot testing) .
- Start with broad, open-ended questions, then narrowing the question.
- Make ample use of probes to elicit rich data.
Focus Group formal Interviews
- Use a round table and make it appear formal.
- Start with broad question.
- Move from one student to another by calling their name, asking same question.
Interviews are useful to:
- establish rapport and empathy while collecting data
- probe into students’ objective states about the class
- obtain information from students who do not easily write about their thoughts and feelings
- use students’ remarks to stimulate contributions from other students
c) Observation systems
- Observers attentively watch and record what they see and hear in specific setting.
- Can be conducted either direct or mediated observations.
Direct observation
> Observers are present to see, hear, and record what takes place.
Mediated observation
> Observers watch videotapes or listen to audiotapes of recorded events.
- Observation systems can be done in two ways.
Structured observations
> Observers will plan before the observation begins.
> Observers focus on limited set of categories.
> Use observation sheet.
> Can ask other people to act as direct observers.
> Enhanced precision because it allow researcher quantify data.
Unstructured observations
> Observers do not plan what he/she want to focus on.
> Observers need to jot down right after class is finished, and later recording a fuller description in journals.
Observation is useful to:
- Check for nonverbal expressions of students’ feeling
- See which students play together, walk together between classes, and sit together at lunch, assemblies, or extracurricular events
- Grasp how students communicate with one another during group discussions or cooperative group projects
- Check how much time students spend on particular tasks
- Understand how you communicate with students with different characteristics at different times and contexts
d) Documents
- Example of the documents are school records, newspaper clippings, private journal or diaries.
- Researcher needs to keep information confidential.
- Researcher use content analysis (content analysis is an objective, systemic, and quantitative description of written products) or coding to uncover recurring themes and multiple meanings.
2. Data Collecting Techniques
The three procedures (asking questions, observing behaviours, using existing data gathered by someone else) result in raw data is coded for analysis by reducing them into categories or numbers.
Data coded into categories are qualitative.
Qualitative data describe characteristics of people or events according to nominal categories that can not be scaled into equal intervals.
Data coded into numbers are quantitative.
Quantitative data describe amounts of characteristics of people or events, according to cardinal numbers that can be arranged into equal intervals.
3. Data Analysing Techniques
- Analysis is check on what the data mean.
- It is done after collecting data.
- For example discuss with colleague.
THE ETHICS OF ACTION RESEARCH
Focus on researcher moral relationships to the participants, so that no body will be harmed in the research.
Ten specific ethical principles:
1. Obtain data only about variables related to the specific project. Focus on project’s context (e.g. the district, the school, the class), specific target groups (e.g. age ranges, sex, grade levels), hopes (i.e., goals and outcome), and concerns (i.e., perceived pitfalls and obstacles).
2. Discuss the research plan with administrators, colleagues. And appropriate boards so that they provide legitimacy.
3. Obtain the informed consent of participants and their agreement to take part by summarizing project purposes, procedures and hoped for outcomes.
4. Relate to participants with care and respect by connecting with them as whole persons rather than as research subjects.
5. Keep data confidential on individual participants.
6. Do not disclose data publicly without permission from the participants.
7. Inform parents and other community members in order to develop public legitimacy for the project.
8. Strive to integrate the action research into your everyday, primary tasks so that it supports them rather than interferes with your regular professional work. That is the credo of the mature educator.
9. Report research findings to students and to relevant administrators, colleagues, boards, parents, and community members.
10. Seek ways to continue the action research with additional cycles of positive action and meaningful research.
1. Using at least two of the four primary methods (i.e., questionnaires, interviews, observations and documents) to measure each variable under study.
2. Specifying precisely your key variables by dissecting your hopes and concerns for the new practice.
3. Adapting for your project validated methods from traditional research to measure your variables.
4. Representing accurately the multiple perspectives of the participants in your project.
5. Offering easy-to-understand visual or auditory data.
2. Reliability
1. Keep questionnaires simple and short, asking participants to complete them in 30 minutes or less.
2. Have participants in the same subgroups (i.e., students) fill out the same questionnaire at the same time in the same setting.
3. Have interviewers practice before carrying out formal interviews and then by doing at least one pilot-test interview together.
4. Have observers record the same pilot-test events two times, and after each trial to discuss and resolve their difference.
5. Ask coders to analyse the content of two short documents, and after each analysis to discuss their difference to resolve them.
OBSTACLES & PITFALLS
- Lack of self confidence and doubting.
- Therefore, one need to think small, be focused in the action research, where focus in a single practice in a single class.
- And do steps by steps.
This book is very suitable for novice teachers, which the author has included easy-to-understand explanation of methods, steps and phases with a lot of suitable examples. The examples are demonstrated how educators at all levels can use action research to improve their professional practice and change the culture of their schools, districts, or communities. Furthermore, there are study cases of real action research projects included. These study cases lets reader have better understanding in conducting action research. Author also shows how an educator, by reflecting on their past, present and future practice can solve problems, and he offers guidance about the potential pitfalls and challenges that are experience when engaging action research.
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