7.4 Education Research

Continuing Education Option
Designing Instructional Units/Action Research
Education Research, Lesson 7. Section 4

 

What is Action Research?
The completion of your CEO Plan will be based on action research. Action research may be defined as a process to identify areas of need and to apply strategies to address those needs.

Action research is a means by which a teacher collects data that demonstrates the impact of actions on students and other professionals in the school community.

The intent of the action researcher is to gather data from real settings. The setting and the purpose of the study are of primary importance rather than a commitment to develop theory or general knowledge or to use a particular design (Mason, l997).  

Conducting Action Research
When conducting action research, the following three points should be considered:

  1. Results have direct application to real world problems.

  2. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are used.

  3. Treatments and/or methods studied are flexible and could change during the course of the study in response to the results.

For the purpose of the CEO, different basic research designs might be used during action research. The table below represents two research designs. For your action research project, you will select the design that works best with your particular CEO project.  This will be accomplished through your instructional units.

Remember, it is vital that you show student growth. Therefore, you must provide beginning and ending data in some format.

Basic Research DesignsData Collection Methods
1. Single group testPre-test; Intervention; Post-test
2. Test/* Control groups test/Post-testPre-test; Intervention/Control; Post-test

* Control: Non-intervention

Last modified: Wednesday, May 23, 2018, 10:09 AM