Lessons learned from Week 2

One of the lessons that I learned from week 2 was offered by Dr. Kirk Lewis when he said that research should be practical. The reasons he gave why it should be practical also "hit home". I truly believe that when doing action research you should be interested in doing it, be focused on the outcome, and it should be beneficial to the students. I think that the research we are doing should be done to improve the education of our students. 


Talking with my site supervisor and getting his input on my action research project was very interesting. The research project is one that I have great interest in. I think parents should be more involved in the education of their children. Great lesson this week!!!!

Week One- Blog 2

July 18, 2012

There are probably several ways that educational leaders could use blogs. One of the ways that could be very beneficial is to keep parents who may work through the day and unable to attend a meetings abreast of what is going on at the school. the parents could access the blog and be able to provide feedback on an issue.

Educational leaders could also use blogs to get information to their staff when they may be away from school. This allows the staff to see what needs to be done and make comments on different issues. Blogs are just an amazing way to get information out.

July 18, 2012

Week One Assignment

One of the first things that I did for this assignment was to look up a definition for action research. A definition that I chose was provided by North Central Regional Educational Laboratory: Action research is inquiry or research in the context of focused efforts to improve the quality of an organization at its performance. Action research can be done by an individual or collaboratively as a team. One of the most important aspects of action research is that feedback is required. Feedback is the major difference between action research and the traditional form of research in an educational setting.

Action research is a circular type of research. That means you try something to see if it works, if not you investigate and see why it did not work, and finally you make changes. If not, you then repeat the process. some areas of this research may not take as long as other areas. As mentioned above, this type of research is circular; therefore it may require repeating certain steps while not repeating others. People who are affected by the change are usually involved in the research. Action research takes a situation and tries to solve the problem by using data and collaboration to implement a plan to solve the problem the problem that was being investigated.

Action research can be very beneficial in the educational setting. It allows for individuals or groups to research a problem and try to make a change to solve that  problem. Action research may not be the first type of research that was developed, but it is the one to implement if one truly wants to bring about a change.