Action research is continual professional development—a direct route to improving teaching and learning.
Seeking to understand and acting on the best we know. That describes how most educators hope to live and grow as professionals. It also describes action research. For the past 10 years, I have used that statement to introduce action research to school teams, administrators, and other educators in central offices, intermediate service agencies, and departments of education.
A more formal definition of action research is continual disciplined inquiry conducted to inform and improve our practice as educators. Action research asks educators to study their practice and its context, explore the research base for ideas, compare what they find to their current practice, participate in training to support needed changes, and study the effects on themselves and their students and colleagues.
For 60 years, action research has been an avenue for creating professional learning communities whose members engage in problem solving and for attaining individual and collective goals. As Lewin (1946) wrote, action research cantransform . . . a multitude of unrelated individuals frequently opposed in their outlook and their interests, into cooperative teams, not on the basis of sweetness but on the basis of readiness to face difficulties realistically, to apply honest fact-finding, and to work together to overcome them. (p. 211)
My experience with action research has convinced me of its potential to transform professional development. Action research can change the social system in schools and other education organizations so that continual formal learning is both expected and supported. It can replace superficial coverage with depth of knowledge. And it can generate data to measure the effects of various programs and methods on student and staff learning.
Katie's school was involved in an initiative called “Every Child Reads.” Sponsored by the Iowa state department of education, the initiative aimed to change the context in which participants engaged in professional development, help them become more closely connected to scholarship in reading, and support them in generating knowledge and increasing their capacity as learners and leaders. Over a three-year period, participating school facilitation teams (composed of teachers, the principal, and, when possible, district office and intermediate service agency staff responsible for supporting school improvement) became a statewide professional learning community engaged in the study of literacy.
Participants attended 14 days of workshops and received additional technical assistance at their school sites. They studied current practices in their schools and classrooms; examined research related to literacy development; selected and used evaluative instruments to assess literacy; organized and used data to make decisions about effectiveness; learned how to implement new practices; and learned to provide staff development to colleagues as they engaged in these same actions.
Katie implemented the picture word inductive model (PWIM), a new teaching strategy for her, and studied her kindergarten students' vocabulary development as a part of learning to use this model. The picture word inductive model is an inquiry-oriented language arts approach that uses pictures con-taining familiar objects and actions to elicit words from students' own vocabularies. Teachers use it to lead their students into inquiring about word properties, adding words to their sight-reading and writing vocabularies, discovering phonetic and structural principles, and using observation and analysis in their study of reading, writing, comprehending, and com-posing. The picture word cycles (inquiries into the pictures) generally take from four to six weeks at the kindergarten level (Calhoun, 1999).
At first, Katie thought the learning tasks might be too demanding for her students. But as she tried the model and studied what her students did in response, she changed her mind. Katie's data collection showed that her students had achieved a mean gain of 16 sight vocabulary words during their third PWIM unit (in November), and a mean gain of 27 words in their sixth unit (ending in mid-March). These results confirmed for Katie the effectiveness of the picture word inductive model.
Katie also collected detailed data on each student's word knowledge as he or she began the unit and again at the end of the unit. The data allowed her to analyze the word-reading strategies that individual students were using: sight vocabulary, decoding, analogies, common spelling patterns, and context clues (Ehri, 1999). As she analyzed the data for each student and across students, Katie made many instructional decisions, such as which phonics principles needed additional explicit instruction, when more modeling was needed to support using context clues, which students needed small-group work on phonemic analysis, and who needed special attention to encourage independent decoding.
Studying specific domains of student performance and her own instructional practice has become a way of life for Katie.
Katie's use of action research occurred as part of a structured initiative sponsored by a state department of education. This initiative illustrates how education leaders in states, districts, and schools are attempting to make action research a dominant way of doing business—building an organization context that supports inquiry by school staffs working as a whole and by smaller groups and individuals pursuing their particular avenues of study. The development of inquiring communities is what distinguishes action research from school improvement approaches that focus on the implementation of specific initiatives, such as a new curriculum or a new mode of assessment.
Although I am an advocate of carefully conducted action research whether it is individual, collaborative, or organization-wide, I put my professional energy and time into supporting schoolwide and organization-wide action research (Calhoun, 1994; Joyce, Calhoun, & Hopkins, 1999). This action research option has the power to transform the organization into a learning community.
My experience is that regular use of multiple sources of data to inform us about student performance or our own performance is often threatening at first, because it requires that we juxtapose our practices and our students' performance against exemplary research-based practices and high levels of student performance attained in similar settings. The resulting confrontation and social turmoil, however, may be natural accompaniments to substantive change.
The good news is that when groups have adequate organization support in using data as a source of information to guide practice, leadership generally surfaces within the group. These leaders provide examples of using classroom data to make instructional and curriculum changes and model informed decision making and problem solving in action. Their schools begin to use on-site data and the external knowledge base as sources for continually assessing the effectiveness of actions and current practices.
This emerging leadership often signals a change in the social system of the school. It doesn't come easily in most settings, but with opportunity and leadership from school and district administrators, it happens. Along with benefits for students, educators feel more professional.
Educators who wish to use action research for professional development or school improvement should select a structured process to use in the school, district, or region. Many resources are available. Although all action research approaches encourage disciplined inquiry, reflection, and the improvement of practice or expansion of knowledge, they do vary in purposes and emphases.
My own approach (Calhoun, 1994) focuses on the schoolwide or district-wide pursuit of student learning goals. It emphasizes using action research to change how the organization works so that educators study student and staff learning continually and pour information from the external knowledge base into the collective study and action-taking process. Glanz (1998) provides a number of tools useful for administrators and leadership teams as they study school effectiveness and student performance. Sagor (1992) emphasizes the development of collaborative action research teams who identify issues or problems, study the context of those problems, collect data, take actions, and engage in discourse and reflection around the results of those actions. And Hopkins (in press) emphasizes changes in classroom practice through careful study by individual teachers as researchers.
After selecting a resource or action research model, those leading the effort need to learn to use it in their work and determine how to support its use within their organization. If no one in the initiating group has experience and skill in using action research, perhaps faculty members at the local college or university can provide technical assistance.
If the group wishes to use action research to support school improvement as well as individual professional development, the chief administrators in the school or district need to be on board—preferably as members of the initiating group. In most settings, school or district staff members will need to change the way they use data, study student and staff learning, and use the external research base. These changes are unlikely to occur if principals, district office staff members, and the superintendent do not participate and help lead the effort.
Figure 1 provides an example of how schools might structure their action research around a common student learning goal. In providing technical assistance to sites working to implement action research focused on student achievement, I often recommend that they use this Schoolwide Action Research Matrix as a guide for structuring collective inquiry and action. The matrix includes a place to identify the student learning goal that a staff selects for its current collective focus and six sections to describe the content of collective study and action. Educators build their school or district action plans and staff development plans around the actions outlined in each of the six matrix sections.
Action Research for School Improvement-table