Passion for Research

This week I have continued to discover that action research should be an integral part of school improvement.  This week we learned about the nine passions you develop as an administrator.  I believe my proposed project fits into the staff development section of the nine passions discussed in this week’s lesson.  However, when I continued to study the other eight passions I realized that this project would have some impact on curriculum development, individual teachers, and school performance.  The integration of technology into the curriculum can enrich a lesson and keep students more involved in the lesson.  When students are more engaged in the lessons being taught they are more likely to understand or feel more comfortable asking questions.  This will help teachers have fewer classroom management issues and possibly keep teachers excited about their careers.  When most of us started teaching we had a passion for this job.  I believe that helping teachers feel comfortable with technology can bring back that loving feeling towards their careers.

Purpose and Significance of my Action Research Project

My campus of over 800 students has a great deal of technology available.  However, the hardware and software is not being utilized to capacity.  There are teachers scattered throughout the campus that embrace the use of technology, but the majority of teachers do not incorporate it into their curriculum.  The purpose of my action research plan is to increase the use of available technologies for instructional purpose on an elementary campus. 

I believe that this action research study is significant because teachers, students, and administrators will all possibly benefit.   My goal is to find the reasons why some teachers do not use technology in their classrooms regularly.  I hope to teach staff development that is tailored to the needs of the differing technology comfort levels on my campus.  This will help the teachers feel more at ease with the technology available.  The students will be more involved in the lessons that incorporate technology, which will help with classroom management.  The administrators will benefit from knowing that the funds spent on technology is being used to its full potential.

Why Blog?

There are several ways that an educational leader can use a blog.  The most obvious way would be to use it as a journal.  A blog can help the principal communicate what is happening on their campus with parents and the community.  Another way to use the blog would be to ask for ideas or information from other educational leaders.  Teaching is already an isolated profession and a principal must feel even more isolated from their peers.  Being able to express your thoughts in a blog and have other professionals respond with ideas could be very rewarding.  A principal is also able to use a blog to “capture their thinking as an inquiry unfolds”(Dana, 2009, p. 87).  We are not taught to value our own thoughts.  However, Dana (2009) states that capturing your own thinking over time can lead to critical insights into your administrative practice, insights that may only occur when you revisit a thought or when you string a number of thoughts together” (p. 88).  Using a blog this way can allow you to step away from the issue and read about it later.  An educational leader will be able to see their growth as a professional and be more likely to share their knowledge with others.

Dana, N. F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

What Have I Learned?

To be honest I had never heard the term action research until this class.  So, I guess you can say I have learned a lot!   Action research “focuses on the concerns of practitioners (not outside researchers) and engages practitioners in the design, data collection, and interpretation of data around their question” (Dana, 2009, p.5).  Action research allows people directly involved with a problem to be the ones that are a part of forming a solution.  The reflective part of action research allows for restructuring of the solution based on continual observation.  The educational research that I was familiar with was process-product or qualitative research.  These types of research do not include input from those directly involved with the day-to-day business of education (Dana, 2009, p. 5).  Many times a teacher will be told to change the curriculum or discipline plan based on studies and data that were not from their school or district.  As a teacher, I would sometimes question the changes being made.  Something that is good for one campus in our district might not be the best fit for the other sixteen.  If action research was put into place and changes were being made based off of the findings and concerns of teachers and administrators, I believe those changes would be met with less hesitation. 

I plan to use it in my own classroom to help with parent communication.  I am going to be a digital classroom and am interested to see if there are any changes in parent perception about communication.  I have always used a communication folder, phone calls, AlertNow, a calendar and written notes to help communicate.  However, each year there are parents that feel like I don’t communicate well based off of the end of the year survey.  Not many feel this way, but enough that it bothers me.  This will not be my big action research project. I simply want to use the cyclical method of action research to try and meet the communication needs of all my parents. 

Dana, N. F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.