What is Action Research?

When I was explaining what action research was to another teacher I found it was easier to describe what it was not.  It is not going to the library to find out what others have found on the topic that you are interested in.  It is not going to the internet and searching for answers to a problem and then implementing those answers and crossing your fingers hoping that what worked for someone else will also work for you.  Action research is basically researching your actions to see if what you are doing as a professional is providing positive results for you or your school or are you just spinning your wheels?  It is thinking about “what ifs” and implementing those “what ifs” ,  processing, collecting, and interpreting data and using that data to assess what is working and what can be tweaked to improve your schools performance.   For the process to be successful, the administrator or teacher who is using action research must reflect and make changes to his or her practices to improve their job performance and that of the school.   

Action Research kind of reminds me of when I go to the optometrist to get my vision checked.  He puts a lens in front of me, asks how the letters look, then turns the lens and asks “better here or better there?”, “sharper here or sharper there?” and the process continues until he gets the optimum performance from my eyes.  Granted it will take longer than 15 minutes but the process is similar.  You analyze your data, adjust your practices to see if the data gets better and implement what works and revise what is not working.

If you want administrator inquiry to work, you have to be honest with yourself.  Everyone I know wants their ideas to succeed.  It becomes very difficult for a person to admit that what they are doing is not working.  You have to be willing to accept when your ideas fail, as well as when they succeed if you want to be the best educator you can be. 

The idea behind action research is to help a professional become a lifelong learner and not a robot that simply implements what they are being told to do. It is a great tool for helping an administrator assess and improve upon his or her practices.

Administrator uses of blogs

There are several ways that an administrator could put blogs to good use.  As a reflective journal, the administrator would be able to write down whatever emotions or concerns he or she may have had throughout the day and use this information to help make more thought out decisions.  Administrators could use blogs to share ideas with other administrators not only from their district but from across the world. School leaders could also use blogs to help them get feedback from all stakeholders in his or her school.  An example would be to blog about an upcoming school event. Students, parents, teachers, or other followers of the blog would be able to give comments or suggestions to help that event run smoother or be more successful.  This would also give all stakeholders a sense of worth knowing that the school leader is actively searching for suggestions from them.  Another way administrators could use blogs is to have classroom teachers create a blog, and for him or her to follow those blogs and use them to gauge the campus climate or address any concerns that teachers may have.