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Classroom Action Research

Betsy Gilliland

Department of Second Language Studies

University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa

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Day 1

Driving Questions for Action Research

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Noticing

Freewrite for 5 minutes.

Who are your students? What are they interested in?

How do they talk with you?

How do they relate to each other? Are there group leaders? Do they sit in the same place every day?

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What Is Action Research?

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Core Concepts of Action Research

ACTION = What you do

Circumstances
How you got here
Why the situation is as it is

RESEARCH = How you come to know about what you know

Data-gathering
Reflection on action revealed through data
Generating evidence from the data
Making claims to knowledge based on evidence

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Core Concepts of Action Research

“Traditional” views of research (social sciences): acting ON and studying OTHERS

Researcher is impartial, “unbiased,” removed
Theory developed to inform practice

Action research: acting WITH and studying SELF

Essential to be reflexive and critical
Be clear about your own values: what you believe and how you are practicing what you believe

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Reflecting on Beliefs

Freewrite for 5 minutes.

What do you believe about your role in the classroom?

How do you want your students to behave towards you?

What attitudes do you believe your students have about language learning?

What kind of instructional techniques work best in the classroom?

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Is Action Research Right for YOU?

Do you like exploring and reflecting on new ideas?
Are you open to trying new approaches?
Can you tolerate uncertainty?
Are you a reflective teacher in general?

https://go.hawaii.edu/rfT

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Is Action Research Right for YOU?

Do you have colleagues to collaborate with on your research project?
Does your department or school support your doing research?
Are you involved in making decisions in your department, college, or school?
Do you have access to expert support for your research?
Are you willing to act decisively and insist on what you need for your project?
Do you have time to do research?

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Is Action Research Right for YOU?

Add up how many YES answers you have. (These are qualities that are good to have for doing AR)

Which of the NO answers can you work around?

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Plan

Act

Observe

Reflect

Revise

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Wondering

Freewrite for 5 minutes.

What has puzzled you about your students’ learning?
What have you done so far to figure out more about your students’ learning?
How might the project you are developing address some of your puzzles about your students’ learning?
What are you most curious about?

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Developing Researchable Questions

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From Wondering to Questions

Review the Wondering and Noticing you did earlier.

Is there a dominant topic?
Are you interested in that topic? If so, why?
What do you want to know about that topic?
How will knowing more about it help your teaching? Your students’ learning?

Talk with your neighbor about what you think.

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Teaching vs. Researchable Questions

“Teaching Questions focus on the teacher, on what he or she does and how he or she does it.”

Seek answers to specific teaching problems
Focus on particular instance through a course of action

“Research-able Questions… are open-ended… They are usually focused on others—on students, for instance—and not on the questioner.”

Multiple directions and responses
Start with the phenomenon or situation
Phrased without assumptions or preconceptions

Freeman, 1999 (p. 61)

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First-order and Second-order Questions

First-order: what people do (action)

Can be seen and understood by those outside outside the situation (etic)
Documented through observation and measurement

Second-order: how people understand what they do (perception)

Not directly accessible by others (emic)
Documented by self-reports, interviews, surveys

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Writing Researchable Questions

https://go.hawaii.edu/XMj

From the reflection you have done today, brainstorm and draft at least 5 different researchable questions

Try using the critical question frames

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Critical Question Checklist

Does the question have the right scope?
Is it open-ended or closed-ended?
Is the question biased?
Does the question lend itself to data collection?
Does the question relate to current research?
Is the question ethical?

Share your questions with a partner

Use the criteria from the Critical Question Checklist to review each question

Identify on 2-3 related questions as your potential research focus

(from Burns, 2009, pp. 32-33)

Questions to ask of your research questions:

scope: consider how broad or narrow the question is. It should be broad enough to research over some time, but not so broad you can’t do it practically—focus on a skill area or particular problem. Ex of too-broad: “What improves motivation in my class?” too narrow: “Do students like writing groups?”
Open/closed: better to have an open question that can be investigated in depth rather than yes/no
Bias: the wording of the question makes assumptions about value of intervention or tools: “Why do students hate group work?” (do you know they hate it?)
Data collection: some Qs are not appropriate for doing classroom research. Ex: “What is TBLT?” is better answered through reading.
Research: You don’t want to be researching something that has already been proven or disproven. Ex: “How do students’ reading skills develop with a phonics-only approach?” (we already know phonics-only is not as good as including variety of approaches)
Ethics: essential to all research. Do not try to research something that will hurt your students physically or emotionally! Ex: “How can I stop beginner low-achieving students from using the L1 in class?”

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Mingle

Stand up!

Walk around the room talking with colleagues.

Share your research question ideas.
Make notes about what your colleagues want to research.
Revise or add to your own question list as well

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After mingling

What kind of interesting ideas did you hear?
Did you find anyone with similar interests?
Did sharing your own ideas help you refine your focus?

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Workshop Time

Possible research-focused things to do:

Review your project square and other notes for language- and learning-related focus areas

Revise possible RQs to better capture what you want to understand

Search for literature (websites, journal articles, books, etc.) that might report on previous research into what you’re interested in

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Today I ….

Reflection

Take a minute to write a quick reflection or take away from today on a post-it and put it on your intro poster.
Take a minute to write a comment or question about something that you learned from someone today and post it on their Intro Poster.