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Ready.

Set.

Action Research!

Candice McPherson

Dir. of Design and Development

Virtual Arkansas

Welcome everyone! I am so glad you are here. I’d like to start by sharing a bit about myself and learning a little bit about you all. My name is Candice McPherson. I am the Director of Design and Development for Virtual Arkansas. We are part of a partnership between our state department of education and education service cooperatives--technically classified as a state virtual school, we operate as a partner and supplemental program for the K-12 districts in our state. We support the districts with a variety of digital learning needs including expanded access to course offerings for rural students, helping alleviate challenges associated with teacher shortages, and more recently helping schools navigate the demands resulting from the pandemic. My role as director of design and development involves coordinating the creation, maintenance, implementation, and quality of digital course content. Today I am excited to share and learn with you about implementing an action research practice and how that can improve aspects of our organizations. So what about you? Take a couple of minutes to answer this form I will place in the chat so we can learn more about each other, where we’re from, what we do, and what our experience level is with action research.

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A team effort . . .

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Becky Mills

Curriculum and Instruction Specialist becky.mills@virtualarkansas.org

John Ashworth

Executive Director

john.ashworth@virtualarkansas.org

All the Teachers!

Curriculum & Instruction

Campus Directors

Enrollments & Operations

Technology

Design & Dev

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The action research approach has evolved over a a series of several years through intentional actions on the part of multiple stakeholders.

Our Journey to Action Research

Our use history and implementation

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Our course needs better rubrics.

Why do you think that?

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What data or facts lead you to that perception?
What specifically will you change to improve?
How did that change work out in practice.

What really is action research? Some of you shared your definition in the first question set. (Share some?) The way I would describe Virtual Arkansas’ use of it is that it is an attempt to help individuals move away from perceptions, judgments, and reactions and more toward data, analysis, and solutions. In the example above, a perception or judgement would be the statement that our course needs better rubrics. A knee jerk reaction would be to delete all the rubrics and replace them with ones you feel are better. In some cases, this may work out well, but in others if the problematic parts of the rubric haven’t been fully explored, you could actually be replacing someone else’s ineffective rubric with your own ineffective rubric. Action research calls on the person to get more granular and specific. First, find data or facts that have led you to the conclusion that the previous rubrics were bad. What specifically will be different about the new rubric you are adding? Then follow up with data and facts that indicate how your change may have worked out in practice. Try to see the process objectively where possible and be prepared to change course based on what the data tells you.

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Action Research Timeline

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2020

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Required Participation

Using prompting questions, all teaching teams planned, implemented, and presented.

📚

2021

Becomes a Crucial Tool

We see teams using these methods to respond to new pandemic induced problems.

Pre-2018

📗

Pilot Years

Teachers learned about the process and made it collaborative.

📘

2018-19

Choice to Participate

The collaboration aspect remained, teams chose whether to opt in.

The original idea evolved from a personal research experience to a collaborative research experience where teachers were asking questions, gathering data, and making changes based on the results.

I’d like to share now how action research has evolved as part of our organization. The original idea evolved from a personal research experience to a collaborative research experience where teachers were asking questions, gathering data, and making changes based on the results. It was inspired by a publication released by the Teacher’s Network Leadership Institute that outlines the process for an individual teacher to improve reflective practice through a defined process. Rather than setting teachers out as doing it completely on their own, they worked together to go through the process collaboratively in their professional learning communities/collaborative teams. In the early years, everyone participated and it was made a requirement of instructional duties. The demands of the workflow and other initiatives proved to challenge the fidelity with which groups invested in the process. In 2019, we kept the collaborative aspect of the process and teams chose whether or not to opt in.

6/11 Teams opted in 2019. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1My7V0TOW7ItupygbI4RH_icSkg9L6mGx7eLH8JOrc0A/edit?usp=sharing You can see what some of the groups picked as their research topics here. When they presented their results later in the year, the outcome was very positive and changed some of the perspectives toward action research. The teams presented later in 2019 with some incredible results--consider this example from World Languages where the team explored different types of language instruction. In 2020, we returned to the requirement of all teams to participate but also tried to tie it in with other organizational initiatives rather than increasing the workload with another task, it became a part of the workflow. One example from that period in

2021 is the Science Team who conducted research about social emotional impacts of the pandemic. The results they shared at the end showed an improved average grade of 9 percentage points from 62% to 71% and a decrease in overall anxiety post survey.

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The General Process

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The long term impact of the action research journey is that the process has become a more frequent and inherent technique used by teachers.

Address the problem with a solution

Use data to define a problem

Evaluate the impact of the solution

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Challenges:

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Procrastination can affect authenticity of the process.
Too many pedagogical initiatives in the organization can diminish morale and buy-in.
Some teachers may be less familiar with the value of the research process as it relates to their daily workflow.

Outline your challenges and consider solutions that end up making the process even better.

Some challenges to overcome when implementing action research. Procrastination can affect authenticity of the process. This becomes more of a problem when there is little buy-in and individuals see it as a to-do they have to check off. It’s not about throwing something together in the end, it needs to be seen as both long-term and ongoing.

Too many pedagogical initiatives in the organization can diminish morale and buy-in. If there is a way that you support teachers to incorporate your organizational goals into their action research, that is best. For example synchronous learning . . .if that is a focus for you consider having teams do their action research within that context rather than pushing separate programs and PDs that are out of context. Some teachers may be less familiar with the value of the research process as it relates to their daily workflow. Not all teachers have a background in data gathering and analysis. An excel sheet may be one of the most terrifying things in the world--providing basic support and upskilling in this area can really help in a variety of ways.

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Two for one!

Instead of having action research processes compete for time with other pedagogical initiatives, encourage teachers to incorporate and test those initiatives in the process.

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A fusion of two goals can result in a greater success and more meaningful implementation of both.

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How might this look for your org?

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Do you already do action research?
How can you see it being implemented for your teams?
What would be the greatest value of trying it out?

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Thank you!

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Reach out with any further questions!

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.

-Zora Neale Hurston