Doctor Clare

Conducting research in the classroom can take on many forms, and it is a pretty safe bet that every teacher today uses some of them already. We teach because we want our students to learn, we lecture, we implement hands-on activities, we deliver information, facilitate learning opportunities and encourage questioning in the classroom or space but how do we know that students are receiving it? Research tells us this. You gather up the chapter tests at the end of the unit, pore over the day’s returned worksheets, ask for a quick “thumbs up/thumbs down” as the bell rings and students are packing their bags to get to the next period. This is all research, designed to assess student progress, and we use this to inform instruction, plan our next day’s lesson, decide who needs more intervention and who is ready to move on. If you are looking for a way to be more systematic about your approach, consider Action Research. Action Research is a tool to further these goals and provide more structure to your decisions in the classroom. 

Action Research, as a concept, has been around for quite a while. The term “action research” was first used by Kurt Lewin in 1944 to describe a process of examining, systematically, the results of one’s own actions in solving a problem. Of course, any good teacher will periodically take a look at students results as a means of evaluating their own teaching and assessing student comprehension and performance. Action Research takes this a step further, however, and describes a systematic way of conducting instruction and evaluating the results. Analyzing outcomes in this way allows practitioners to interrogate their own practice, with a goal of improving it. 

When setting out with the desire to implement Action Research in the classroom, one must first choose a particular area of interest. Think about the students, the curriculum, the activities that happen in a day, and decide what it is that needs addressing. This could be related to content, instructional technique, student behaviors, social needs, or any of the other processes of students and teachers during the school day. One may choose to focus on something isn’t working in the classroom, students who are struggling or not mastering content in a particular area, or having difficulty behaviorally or socially. Alternately, it may just be that there is a particular area of curriculum or instruction that is interesting and deserves more attention. Also consider how any results of research may impact the larger educational community, including serving other students and schools. 

With a topic in place, choose one to three specific research questions. These will guide you through the work, and make touchstones to return to during the course of the research. A good research question is answerable with research; a question should be able to be answered by examining your actions. It is laudable to wonder about the best reading intervention that exists, for example. It is practical to investigate whether this reading intervention gets better results than that reading intervention. A good research question is also specific; too broad of a question can feel overwhelming and difficult to answer within the narrow scope of one classroom, one subject, or one group of students. Finally, a good research question contains indicators on how it will be evaluated. Examine student performance in relation to a specific marker, such as performance on chapter tests, number of office referrals for behavior, or how many give a thumbs-up at the end of a lesson.

With a topic and a question, it is time to conduct the research. Before diving into action in the classroom it is worthwhile to spend a little time becoming familiar with what is already known about the topic. Let existing research guide you. Find exiting research in a number of places. There may be citations or published works linked in already-existing classroom curricula. Colleagues and university classmates can be excellent sources of ideas. Alternately, turn to online resources. Online research repositories are numerous, and can offer evidence-based suggestions for intervention across a wide range of needs and ages. Or a general search of extant research can offer background on what has been published on the subject. 

Build on the research you find by considering what is unique about your classroom and your situation. Consider what it is about your class, your students, what you need and what they bring that adds to the state of the research as it currently is. While researchers may have tested interventions in a variety of settings, your setting offers a unique combination of factors of student and teacher, classroom structure and setting, whatever that may be. Your diversity is your strength, and adds to the significance of what you are doing by setting out to complete research in the first place. With this clear definition of your setting, you can clearly define the purpose of your study and clarify what the research you produce will offer to the wider world.

On that note, considering applications in wider contexts, we must consider ethical obligations. This is to say, our work as teachers and researchers must be for the good of the students, and with that in mind at all times. Think about the consequences of doing this work for all those concerned: the researcher, the participants, the institution, and society as a whole. Avoid harm to anyone involved, including the harm of identifying individual students for intervention, and the impact this may have. Our work is not to change personalities or behaviors to be more palatable to us, but to support individuals to reach their goals and to be successful in the ways they value. With that in mind, we can be confident that we are teaching students useful skills and not simply how to conform or mask inner desires and drives for the comfort of others.

With a background and clear research goals, it is time to plan an intervention to answer those questions you have asked. Use the existing research to inform you, and plan how you will implement the intervention, as well as gather information about it. If you are interesting in qualitative results, plan to conduct observations of students, document their changes. You may also want to consider teaching the students how to self-assess, and get affective responses, to evaluate the student experience. This data could be gathered through interviews as well. If you are interested in quantitative analysis, plan how you will gather numerical data. You could plan to chart student performance numerically, such as tracking questions correct on an assessment or words read correctly on tests of fluency. You could analyze work samples, assigning points for presence and absence. You could give students surveys or engage them in self-assessments by tracking their own performance daily or weekly, then display this in tables and charts. Ultimately, whatever data you decide to track should be organized for analysis. This is where the decision-making happens.

The final, and perpetual, step of Action Research is to analyze the data, refine your practice based on the results, and repeat your actions from this new, enlighten perspective. Analyzing the results allows for a thoughtful conclusion to be drawn as to the effectiveness of the intervention or instruction. Consider what worked and what didn’t, but also ease of implementation, student buy-in and motivation, and also enjoyment and enthusiasm for doing things this way. All of these are valid outcomes, and a method that is enjoyable is likely to be continued. With a thorough analysis in mind, modify your theory and repeat. Use the findings of your action to guide the next cycle of action and research. If there was a part that wasn’t successful, you may want to go back to the research stage to find other alternatives to use instead. You may wish to modify it, if you have an idea of what it was that wasn’t working. Alternately, you may wish to omit that component entirely. Since Action Research is based on action, in the classroom, you have the liberty to make these adjustments. Continue to implement, analyze, and adjust as needed, creating positive and impactful learning experiences for you and your students.

As a postscript, of sorts, consider preparing your findings to share. One of the benefits of Action Research is being able to share your findings with others, and benefiting from the research that others have done as well. Since you have a well developed rationale, a thoughtful research question, a research base upon which you have drawn, and carefully considered methods and analysis, you are well situated to write up your findings for publication in a variety of venues. Many online journals and repositories seek out work from classroom teachers, and some education conferences and print journals do as well. Consider a write up of your experiences, include the results and student experiences, and share those ideas with others who may be in the same situation. After all, this is the foundation of the research world—trying new things and sharing what happens!