BTAR Ch. 8

BTAR Ch. 8
Living Action Research as a Professional Teacher

I have spent many years as an instructional assistant learning and honing the tools and methods that I use to motivate, inspire and teach students with special needs. The process of becoming a master teacher, winning coach or a martial artist is a never ending process and cycle. What works today may not work in the future. We must discard or modify old techniques to adjust to our ever changing environment and context. I have noticed that this mind set can be difficult to attain for some people. Certainly in some areas of my life I am less flexible, less open to change, less open to self analysis, but in many and in fact most areas of my life, I am open to belief revision. I want to be the kind of person and teacher who is able to change with the times, who will admit when I am wrong, and change with the evidence. I think that this mindset is the essence of action research.

In a previous blog , the first blog I wrote about Action Research, I compared this process to my experience coaching high level basketball teams. This comparison is even stronger for me today as I am reaching the end of the BTAR book and nearing the actual action research project that I will embark on. While I know that I will have many questions and sticking points during my first “real” action research project, I also know that I have the right mindset to carry out this task.

BTAR Ch. 7

BTAR Ch. 7

Telling the Story of Your Action Research

When I think about presenting my research or as the book puts it, “going public,” I try to imagine it as something that is useful and possibly inspiring to other teachers that work in a similar area of special education. I want to find the best way of showing how this project is personal to me but at the same time I do not want to come across as if I am ranting, complaining, or preaching. The authors try to tear down the myth of the “academic” voice and I appreciate their efforts. When I read academic papers, most of them have a similar voice. My goal is to avoid this academic voice and to find my own.

Traditionally, academic language is valued and thus papers written in this way will be better received. This however leads to the very dry writing style that we have come to stereotype academic writing as. I want to make a point, I want to show objective data, I want to clearly lay out my thoughts and ideas so that it can be understood by virtually anyone. This is the tension between the professional and the personal that they talk about.

I appreciate the many tips given to guide the “going public” process. Understanding and clearly communicating the purpose of the research and understand the audience that will be reading it is very important to me. I feel like I know where I want to go in these areas. I am just not exactly sure how to get there. As I experiment with different ideas and data collection tools, I am beginning to see why the authors are constantly telling us that we need to let our critical question change and evolve.

Finally, this chapter lays out a very clear road map to developing the action research paper. This will be very useful to me as it conforms to the way that I like to put a paper together; section by section, linked by interlocking ideas and concepts. I think that I might even start an outline of my paper rather soon and build in the information and content as it comes to me. Later next year as I am conducting my research and gathering new ideas and data I can incorporate into this project.

BTAR Ch. 6

BTAR Ch. 6

Final Data Interpretation

The chapter begins by challenging us to define interpret. My definition would be; to reconstruct a message in a more understandable form. The authors draw a line between interpretation as instruction and as provocation. This is a difficult concept for me. I want to ANSWER my critical question at times. I want to do an experiment and solve the mystery. The authors suggest that we never truly solve these types of problems and that we never find “truth.” I agree with this concept when it comes to many claims, even many scientific claims.

This book can be frustrating. At times it is describing technical means of data collection and analysis and then quickly turns to “personal meaning making.” These shifts from hard scientific techniques and processes to the “touchy-feely” makes for confusion.

I like the clarity of the general steps to data collection. The tip of taking time with the data, revisiting it, and analyzing it over many sittings makes sense to me. I am familiar with a few data analyzing tools, such as excel pivot tables and slicers, and I know I will use that tool. The other ideas, including, mind mapping, color coding, and charting the “thought-know-want to know” of the data will be helpful and make logical sense to me for my research. However, I will not know until I attempt these processes and use these tools.

Finding colleagues and mentors to bounce ideas off of has always been helpful to me. With my research question in particular I will need to hear from multiple self contained classroom teachers in order to get a feel for what works best for building a strong staff work environment. The book suggests seeking out different perspectives as one of the many layers of data interpretation.

Finally we are given the criteria for trustworthy teacher action research. The idea that jumped out at me the most was “thick data.” This means using multiple perspectives, consulting with mentors and distant colleagues, and illustrating the themes of the research and your recommendations in a way that shows you are on a thorough and unique journey toward improving yourself as a teacher.

BTAR Ch. 5

Ongoing Data Analysis

I am immediately struck by the distinction between data analysis during the research project and final data interpretation after the study is completed. This is a distinction that I have not considered before and I generally assumed that while you might "peek" at your data as you gathered it, analyzing it would not be beneficial until you completed the length of your study. The chapter goes on to outline important terms and techniques for research data.

Analysis : Breaking down data into smaller pieces. A dissection to look at each part.
Synthesis: Putting all of the parts together to observe the data as a whole. Looking for what the big picture is telling us from our data.
Deconstruction: Taking apart our methods and looking to see where we might be influencing data or making assumptions about the data.
Contextualization: This is a meta process of viewing how we view data. Understanding who we are as observers. Understanding the culture, location, historical influences, social influences, etc. that may be skewing our view of the data.

We have been given the task to start an observation protocol and I am finding it difficult to perfectly locate my targets, however chapter 5 suggests being open to ongoing data analysis that changes, adapts, and evolves as the study progresses. I know that I will need to do this with my critical question. Ultimately, chapter 5 is urging us to be mindful of the data that is coming in, journal our thoughts, make notes on what is working and what is not, be open to the possibility that our focus could shift as the data reveals new information, and to deeply analyze where we could be missing something or making mistakes based on our contextual views.

Designing Research

Moving from the conceptual to the execution of a study, specifically my unique study area of teambuilding among instructional assistants, is a deep concern of mine. Infact I have been weighing the idea of making a dramatic shift in my research focus to better allow me to approach this project from a slightly more traditional direction. Similar thoughts begin to arise when I consider the implementation of my strategies. At the moment I am considering team building, staff meeting, and group involvement strategies to “test” on the staff that will be under my supervision. My goal is to build better communication and sense of “team” within the staff that will ultimately have positive effects on the students in our class. I can already imagine implementation fidelity issues with my current plan.

I do not think that having a comparison group will apply to my current research question. However I could see using interviews and narrative reports from staff on their previous experiences in self contained classes as a form of comparison to the interventions that I would like to implement.

The design experiment, described in the article is interesting and I think it might be more applicable to my study. I have a goal (staff feeling appreciated/part of a team) and I want to try various tools to increase this feeling among the people I work with. Perhaps this is a direction I should go…

In general I would say that this article is scaring me off my current area of interest, which is too bad because i am passionate about the importance of building and maintaining a cohesive team for self contained classrooms. As I read through the measurements section, I found myself wondering “how will i get multiple measures of the ‘feeling’ of being appreciated and part of a team?” This is just another of the many concerns that are bubbling up for me.

*Steve, if you think that I am way off base with my general idea of studying IA staff as it relates to their perceived levels of appreciation and “team,” please tell me.