Action Research
As I began this class and reading Craig Mertler's (2020) book on action research, I realized that I have been doing action research for all of my 16 years in teaching. Action research has a cyclical format where you can complete the four steps in any order that you want. You may want to go back to something that you've already done in order to refine your research. This is something that all teachers do without really thinking about it. I know that as I go through the day teaching the same subjects multiple times, I make adjustments to how I deliver the lesson based on how my students react to situations that come up. Action research is a more deliberate approach to the same process. You choose a topic and come up with a real plan to investigate a particular aspect of your teaching and share the results with others.
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During EDLD 5315, we have been given the opportunity to learn more about the action research process and develop our own plans of action. In the beginning, an outline for our plan was made. It was the base of what would be building as we learned more in class. Then it was time to learn more. We were tasked with finding others that have done similar research already in order to learn from their examples and compile a literature review. Using what I learned during my literature review, I made some modifications to my outline. In my outline, I basically wrote it out as if I was going to flip my classroom for the whole year. Eventually that is the goal, but I have learned from other research in the past that you don't want to overwhelm yourself by flipping everything at one time. I decided then that on my action research plan, I would do my research during a time period in which I will do two units of study that are related. If the flip goes well during that shorter period, then I will look into continuing the flipped method and bringing in the rest of my students that participated as the control group.
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Reference
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Mertler, C. A. (2020). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators. Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications