ACTION RESEARCH IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

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Canadian Journal of Action Research Volume 23, Issue 2, 2023, pages 5-8

ACTION RESEARCH IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

An Editorial

Patricia Briscoe

Niagara University Ontario

My introduction to action research (AR) began in 2004 when I was selected to complete a 6- month professional development AR course with my school board. At the time, I was an early career teacher trying to survive one of my Nirst teaching placements. My project title was Nitting: Why Do Junior Students Dislike French? The research process changed my teaching practice. I realized that research-based evidence was critical for guiding educational practice.

Over the years as a public school teacher and now as a higher education teacher, I have completed several AR projects; each one has helped me gain more self-autonomy in my professional practice. I continue to pass along my belief and passion that AR is a self-changing process. For the past 4 years, I have taught an introductory research course to teacher candidates where they learn how to conduct their own “mini” AR projects based on problems of practice during their teaching practicum. Last term, my own AR project was to track my students’ learning and responses to their AR processes and Nindings. I was pleased to discover that their responses mirrored how I felt in 2004: Many commented that they were pleasantly surprised at the amount they learned and how relevant AR could be to their teaching.

Action research is an intentional and systematic investigation process (Stringer, 2014) that can help educators Nind solutions, based on evidence, to everyday issues and problems of practice. This special issue is designed to not only highlight the beneNits of AR but to also encourage educators to use AR to Nind solutions to the challenges created by the COVID-19 global pandemic. As we have all experienced, the pandemic created challenges, chaos, and many unknowns, such as the isolation of online learning, the rigid structures imposed in classrooms, and the extreme hurdles placed on researchers seeking ethical approval, to name a few. Like myself, educators, groups of educators, and educational system leaders were recognizing the powerful autonomy of conducting their own research on issues they were facing during the pandemic and determining links between effective professional practice and learning (Parsons et al., 2013).

Out of necessity, partnerships were formed between teacher educators, teacher-mentors, and pre-service and/or novice teachers to Nind solutions to the many challenges created by the pandemic. Action research provided a method for “looking at one’s practice or work

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The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Volume 23, Issue 2 (2023), 5-8 6

situation inquisitively, critically and analytically to gain an in-depth knowledge of its rationale, relevance, effectiveness and efNiciency” (Kumar, 2014, p. 49). The belief that educators could Nind solutions amid chaos became the motivation of this special issue, Action Research in the Time of COVID-19. The goal was to invite colleagues to highlight how they were seeking autonomy and engaging in systematic action research approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic. The call for submissions encouraged colleagues who were currently teaching, learning, researching, and/or working in education-related contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic to engage in action research for the purpose of documenting and contributing to this special issue to disseminate their Nindings and discuss the ways they found autonomy in challenging times.

COVID-19 affected all educational systems across the world. I am happy to say that the articles in this special issue provide a global perspective with a broad range of research contexts, including Southeast and East Asia, Lithuania, rural Manitoba, an urban city in British Columbia, inner New York city, and other states across the United States of America.

The articles also demonstrate how these reNlective practitioners responded to the following questions:

• What am I doing?

• Why am I doing this?

• How is this practice affecting my students?

• How can I improve my practice?

• What new practices hold the most promise for addressing my problem?

• How can I help others?

In their processes of posing, exploring, and Ninding answers to these questions, the authors share with CJAR readers how they made connections between practice and theory and tested practical solutions through action research to challenging (and unknown) circumstances. In doing so, they also built a body of knowledge that will enhance professional and community practices using a range of global perspectives and contexts.

All the articles in this special issue emphasize different aspects of exploring and solving professional problems and highlight Nlexibility, adaptability, new ways of approaching challenges, and, most importantly, hope. In the article, “Harnessing the Affordances of Action Researchers to Address the Challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational Leaders Take Action Research Online,” the authors Brydon-Miller, Hicks-Hawkins, Johnson, Jones, Wade, and Woolridge explore the unique affordances of action research by discussing their crucial strategies for generating knowledge and developing solutions to the challenges created by the pandemic as they moved to online research settings and found ways to adapt existing research methods and devise new approaches. This article describes the work of a group of doctoral students in a US Educational Leadership Program and their instructor in carrying out action research methods in both synchronous and asynchronous online settings. The authors describe the approaches they developed in the hope that this would enable other action researchers to implement these methods in their own schools, organizations, and communities. The speciNic actions described in this paper are (a) future creating workshops, (b) citizens’ juries, (c) a world café, (d) nominal group technique, and (e) digital storytelling. They conclude that the pandemic taught them to be Nlexible and

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willing to innovate; they suggest that AR enabled them to address their challenges and they hope it inspires others to do the same in the future.

In Buelvas’s article, “An Action Research Study of Using Group-Based Remote Learning with ESL High School Students in English Language Arts,” she discusses her experiences teaching ESL students remotely in New York City high schools. SpeciNically, she discusses Ninding opportunities for collaboration, training, and communication as she strives to be an inclusive educator who meets the needs of her students. Buelvas’s research speciNically addressed the following questions: (a) What opportunities do I Nind most rewarding teaching in an online environment to students for whom English is a second language? (b) What do I Nind to be most challenging teaching ESL students in the online context? (c) How can media play a part in online teaching and learning, and how do students respond to online learning with these mixed media platforms? (d) What recommendations can be offered to other inclusive educators who are teaching online? Buelvas provides an analysis of student assessment to show the progress, where applicable, for one class of ESL students and in doing so highlights the ways in which she exercised her autonomy to Nind innovative solutions.

In the article, “SocioscientiNic Issues and COVID-19: Responding to Curriculum Reform through Action Research,” the authors Fuchs and Jellema described the outcomes of COVID- 19 socioscientiNic issue-based lessons. In their AR, they analyzed student interviews, surveys, and work, combined with classroom observations. Their Nindings revealed that COVID-19 socioscientiNic issue-based lessons improved students’ conceptual understanding of the science behind pandemic control measures, increased their feelings of personal responsibility in responding to COVID-19, and broadened their perspectives on the impacts of COVID-19 on diverse populations. They concluded that the framework used to design the lesson series, Three Visions of ScientiNic Literacy, facilitated their response to curriculum reform and evoked future discussion on the use of the framework and implications for socioscientiNic issue-based teaching.

In the article, “Helping Language Teachers in Lithuania Take their First Action Research Steps During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Strategy,” Gallagher-Brett and Lechner recounted their experiences of teaching action research workshops for language teachers in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic. They conducted their work for Action Research Communities for Language Teachers, which is funded under the Training and Consultancies Programme of the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe. Their focus was on the necessary pivot from face-to-face to online action research workshops and professional development for a group of teachers in Lithuania. In their article, they outline the challenges both they and their participants experienced, the lessons learned, and the positive outcomes for language teachers in setting out on their action research journeys.

Their paper contributes to the literature on action research in language education and professional development during COVID-19.

In the article, “Rural Remote Learning in Manitoba during COVID-19: Opportunities and Challenges of Action Research Methodology,” Smith and Moura recounted how seven school divisions in Western Manitoba developed a remote learning program to support medically fragile families whose children could not return to classrooms. The coalition of these school

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divisions, known as the Westman Consortia Partnership (WCP), investigated what beliefs, practices, and strategies were critical to this new rural remote learning program; the coalition then formed a collaboration with the author researchers, Smith and Moura, to answer these questions. Using an action research perspective, the authors unpack the opportunities and challenges they faced in pre-, peri-, and post-research contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article provides a detailed exploration of the action research aspects that were both followed and disrupted according to the social, cultural, and historical context of the participants in the study.

In the article, “Sojourning Educators at International Schools Overseas and the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Stroud Stasel highlights the disruption of mobility between international schools and countries with students and educators shifting between home, host, and intermediary countries. Stroud Stasel explores a subset of data from a study on educator acculturation in international schools that unpacked the effects of, and responses to, the pandemic by sojourning educators at international schools in Southeast and East Asia. The Nindings revealed adaptive responses, mobility barriers and role/school precarity, spikes in acculturative stress, and creative problem-solving. These effects have generated substantial implications for leadership, including an urgent need for active adaptive leadership practices such as contingency planning and action research projects aiming at experiential learning from different stakeholder groups in international schools. Stasel concludes that there is a need for international schools to continue developing educational contingency plans that consider policy alternatives to lead through times of crisis.

Together, this collection of six articles represents a variety of global contexts and approaches to action research. Each article is connected by the autonomy that drove the authors to Nind solutions to problems of practice created by the pandemic. Action research provided them with the structure and intentional processes they needed to Nind hopefulness in a time of chaos. My hope is that, as you read each article in this special issue, you will be inspired by each project and Nind new ideas and approaches to implement in your own practice.

REFERENCES

Forster, C., & Eperjesi, R. (2017). Action research for new teachers: Evidence-based evaluation of practice. SAGE.

Forster, C., & Eperjesi, R. (2021). Action research for student teachers (2nd ed.). SAGE.

Kumar, R. (2014). Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners (4th ed.). SAGE.

Parsons, J., Hewson, K., Adrain, L., & Day, N. (2013). Engaging in action research: A practical guide to teacher-conducted research for educators and school leaders. Brush Education.

Putman, S. M., & Rock, T. (2018). Action research: Using strategic inquiry to improve teaching and learning. SAGE.

Stringer, E. T. (2014). Action research (4th ed.). SAGE.