Process of Action Research

Enacting the Action Research Cycles

Action research is one of those terms that we hear quite often in today’s educational circles. Often, action research is a collaborative activity among colleagues searching for solutions to everyday, real problems experienced in schools, or looking for ways to improve instruction and increase student achievement.

One of the basic principles of action research is that researchers need each other’s ideas for stimulation and depend on other people’s perspectives to enrich their own. For this reason, I elected to become part of an action research team that would apply for and receive technical assistance from an outside consultant. Some colleagues and I began to conduct inquiries into our own teaching. We have so often felt pulled in one direction or another by the swing of the educational pendulum. By doing our own action research we could gain a better perspective into our own teaching and the students’ learning. The changes that we would make in our teaching would come out of our own work. Perhaps most importantly, we would be working as a community of learners.

Our research question became, “What can we provide for effective computer instruction for high school learners who are limited readers or nonreaders?” We began the literature research project by gathering articles that we felt would be of interest. We each read the articles and set aside a day to report our findings back to the group. We also collected as much information as possible on our target students. We looked at their past records and at their current programs. Then we had to determine where we would go from here. This was the most difficult time for our team. Up to this point we seemed to have moved along with only a few problems. Now, our meetings seemed to go in circles. We became very frustrated with our lack of progress. Our impatience caused discord among the members of the team. We were able to move past this point by allowing each member to choose...