Refocusing skills to facilitate action research
The teacher projects involved all four phases of action research. Innovation was a feature of both plans, not only in terms of trying something new but also pairing a known technique with a new situation. The teachers were able to determine that, with the help of a mentor, they had brought forward from cognitive repositories many aspects of their knowledge and skill to formulate and implement a research project.
“But I’m definitely a different teacher from before I started and I think about everything now, not just the reading and the maths abilities. It’s the fine motor skills – is that what’s slowing them down or has she got things going on at home? And you know mixed abilities – is it just about actual academic ability? It’s social things as well. So it’s opened my mind up.”
[TI – 2005 – Janine]
“Enjoyed the opportunity to plan for outcomes and then find that they happened.” [ARR – 2 – Tina] Modifying plans, identifying barriers and extending research
Within the intervention phases the teachers reported being able to monitor their plan and to introduce additional elements. Within action research this modification is crucial as it demonstrates that the teacher is focussed on needs and is continually evaluating and re-planning, rather than rigidly adhering to an original intervention plan.
“During the modelling session at the beginning of each writing session I introduced the use of key words and some simple thinking maps. These seemed to benefit (some named children).”
[ARR – 1 – Tina] From time to time an intervention plan contains elements that turn out to be barriers to progress towards achievement. Being able to identify barriers to progress during the intervention phase was another skill that the teachers reported in their evaluation as having used. Both teachers identified environmental,
student and interaction elements that needed modification, and subsequently amended their plans to meet these unexpected challenges.
“It was a few sessions trying this method that I realised that the liquid timer was a distraction and the students were focussing on this and how long was left rather than doing the work. So I had to modify this.”
[ARR – 1 – Janine] Janine goes on to describe how she overcame this barrier by substituting another timer and removing it from view. Tina notes in her first phase review that she changed the seating of the target children.
“Changing seating of children. All benefited from being placed beside less social and more motivated children.”
[ARR – 1 – Tina] Although there were only two cycles in the teacher action research project, both teachers were able to evaluate their results and describe how they would amend their intervention had they entered a third cycle.
“I would use a video camera to observe the beginning of the activity and how long it took the students to get back on task”
[ARR – 2 – Janine] Janine planned this change as her evaluation had demonstrated that she was missing valuable observational data of the target children because she had distractions from other children in the class who also needed her attention. There is a dilemma implicit here between the teacher in her role as a teacher and a researcher. It is important for an external researcher or mentor to be aware of such dilemmas and to facilitate their solving.
“Would have extended the peer tutoring so that the tutors had more time to develop their skills and work more frequently with the targets.”
[ARR – 2 – Tina] The use of the peer tutors in Tina’s second cycle was limited because of the training of the tutors. Her observations of the work that they did with the target
children convinced her that this was a successful method of helping children to develop their language skills.
Understanding the importance of data
To evaluate any intervention there has to be data. The data collected by the teachers allowed them to conclude that the interventions that they had planned and modified had achieved most of the goals for their students. Tina conducted probes at two points; prior to intervention and at the conclusion of each cycle. Janine conducted weekly probes in a special writing session and then averaged her data for each student over the cycle to provide a progress report for that cycle. The evaluations that the teachers completed were possible due to ongoing and continuous observation of the children’s progress and aspects of their own pedagogy. For Tina, observation was a crucial part of her decision as to which writing stage the children had attained.
Evaluating the usefulness of action research for the classroom
At the conclusion of the project the teachers were asked to evaluate the process of action research following their use of it in their classrooms. The purpose of the exercise was to find out information about its usefulness for busy classroom teachers and how it might be better used. The teacher evaluations are summarised below.
When asked about the most challenging aspect of the action research process, Tina identified the planning phase prior to Cycle 1.
“Planning – deciding how to go about it at my level. Looking at the needs and different ways I could approach the problem. Which way would possibly be of most benefit within the time frame and would cater for the different needs and levels of the children.”
[ARR – 3 – Tina] In this extract we note that Tina is considering individual needs within teacher action research which was a research question. It is also part of the process of inclusive pedagogy. By contrast, Janine found the first intervention phase the most challenging.
“Implementation as I had to keep refining the methods to time as they distracted the students.”
[ARR – 3 – Janine] What the teachers found most useful about the action research process was interesting in that they both mentioned being able to use the process to find solutions to pedagogical difficulties. In their daily interactions with students, teachers experience constant challenges and do find them troublesome at times because solutions do not always present themselves. Janine considered that the process helped her to find solutions to some of those challenges whereas Tina found it useful to have the opportunity to trial some different approaches and to see what did and did not work in her classroom situation.
“Focussing on an aspect that troubled me – finding ways to fix it – looking at how well it worked.”
[ ARR – 3 – Janine]
“The reflection of different approaches. Having a look at what did and didn’t work. Thinking of different ways, approaches to the problems of children not being risk takers (which was my focus).”
[ARR – 3 – Tina] Having decided on a focus, action research afforded both of the teachers an opportunity and an empirical process to trial new ideas and evaluate them. Inclusive pedagogy presents a constant dilemma to the classroom teacher around the practice of meeting the needs of the individual within a classroom environment. Whilst in the first cycle of the research, the teachers had assessed the needs of the individual child they had generally planned for and delivered programmes to the children in broad ability groupings. The action research projects that the teachers undertook demonstrated to them, that it was possible to better deliver to the individual within the classroom or group structure by focussing on a skill need.
learning. Tina considered that action research had facilitated the children to begin to take more risks with their learning which was a student goal for her project.
“Overall I feel the fitness, use of key words and the introduction of mind maps helped most of the children to grow in confidence, gain better time management skills and begin to take more risks to begin and progress through their written language.”
[ARR – 1 – Tina] Janine mentioned that teacher action research had given her a focus, an opportunity to experiment and a chance to look at something that was challenging. Consider this extract in which Janine talks about how something important to her was able to be addressed through the research.
“...my action research was keeping a group of kids on task for a sustained amount of time. Now to me that’s a real learning problem ... you worry about them not reading or you worry about them not being able to add and this actually, this problem actually affects them right across the board.”
[TI – 2005 – Janine] Janine mentioned that some of her colleagues had questioned her focus for her project but she noted that to her not staying on task was a major barrier to learning.
Identifying barriers to using action research in the classroom
Two major barriers were identified by the teachers as hindering the use of action research in the classroom environment: time and large classes. Finding research to assist with the building of new practice was also mentioned. Having the time to do this was a factor but a larger barrier was having the portals to find the research. Whilst the internet was freely available to both the teachers through their school provided laptops, they did not have access to searchable databases such as those supplied to students enrolled in university courses. Community libraries are able to search databases but this takes extra time and expense. The website, Te Kete Ipurangi, was accessed frequently by one of the teachers who found it helpful for some new ideas to trial but not for research.
Another barrier identified was ensuring the target children were willing participants. Each teacher individually worked on a variety of strategies to ensure the interest of the target children. Janine used competitiveness as a strategy by timing the children and initially doing it openly so that the children could see both the progress of the time and the progress of their peers. Tina reported that she used verbal positive reinforcement at a higher rate than normal for her group of target children. She also made sure that they received extra reinforcement following the lesson with stickers and stamps which, for new entrant children, are a strong motivator.
In her review of her project Janine noted that she found meeting the needs of the other children whilst keeping a focus on the programme was a barrier.
“I also struggled to record data down on a regular basis as I often found myself answering other student’s queries instead of observing.”
[ARR – 2 – Janine] Initially the target children were scattered around the room and as she had to shift her observation focus, from target to target, other children caught her eye and asked for attention. Later she partially solved this difficulty by placing the target children together for the writing lesson which allowed her to narrow her focus. Another strategy that both teachers used to overcome this identified barrier was to nest their project within the normal classroom programme so that all the children completed the same broad activity e.g. writing, at the same time but with individual and group objectives and programmes. Incidentally, by doing this they demonstrated that it is possible to meet individual needs within a class programme - an element of an inclusive classroom. As neither teacher had considered doing this before, it suggests that the action research process helps facilitate inclusive pedagogical change and perhaps could be a tool developed in pre-service education.
Identifying future cycles of their research projects
recording more written observations of the behaviours occurring in the class would be beneficial in future. She believed that she had started out well with her written observation but had relied more on memory in the latter stages of the project. This behaviour demonstrates a risk for having teachers as researchers, as their primary focus is teaching rather than research. Because there was no monitoring of her behaviour apart from visits and discussions by the external researcher the reliability of Janine’s data could be questioned.
Beginning with a class focus and then gradually narrowing the focus on to the target children was a suggestion from Tina. She concluded that this change would make the process more manageable because it would allow the teacher to better plan the intervention. It would also allow for the change in teacher behaviour in planning from whole class lessons to planning for groups or individuals. The focus for Tina remains on those groups of learners who might be at risk of underachievement and for Janine it is ensuring that she has individual data on which to assess and plan. Both are considered to be inclusive pedagogy.