Standard 3 Reflection: Improve teaching and learning through the use of educational research at the classroom and school levels

Background

Over the years of teaching in my current school district we have been given articles to read that report their findings on topics such as best teaching instructional practices and engaging students in longer classes.  I have also been in meetings where we have analyzed our state testing data by making observations and asking questions/making wonderings. Additionally, I have done limited research for my focus for Teacher Principal Evaluation Program (TPEP) as well as analyzing data for my growth goal.

Learning and Applied Practice

Previous to starting my Master’s in Educational Leadership, I relied on educational coaches and administers to provide articles that supported me making changes in my teaching practices.  Although I was willing to be an early adopter of technology as well as PBIS and
using GLAD strategies, I didn’t have a formal process of evaluating and reporting whether they made a difference or not.  As a result of my Action Research in School Settings class I now have a process to go through to make this possible. As a result of taking a class on action research I will be able to use the process as I look at other areas of improving my teaching practices as well as sharing this process with others as a way to approach their TPEP growth goals.  I will also provide time for my students (in this case now teachers) to reflect and get feedback from others. Additionally, when I am asked to write/co-write rubrics they will be clearer than in the past. Lastly, I will also promote providing opportunities for students to reflect and improve upon their writing.

In addition,  as a result of taking the Applying Research in Educational Settings class I feel that I have more tools to evaluate articles versus just assuming since they were published that they have studies that back their reporting which will help me be more credible as a teacher leader or coach. As a result of the Applying Research in Educational Settings class I will be able to evaluate articles that are written in professional journals better.  I will also be looking at the primary sources/studies that were done.

Issues Encountered/Problems of Practice Addressed

Action Research in School Settings

In our Accomplished Teacher class we got a head start on our project for Action Research in School Settings by picking our topic of interest which appreciated since it gave us more time to gather data.   I choose to investigate strategies that would help my students to look at feedback provided for them from me or their peers to improve upon their learning in my classroom since that was what I was focusing on for TPEP that particular year.  

For this class, we started the action research project by finding a focus, providing our rationale for our selection, and doing a literature review for our final project.  As we went through this process I found some strategies that I would like to try such as:

-- using technology so they have an electronic portfolio and can see where they have been and where they are going.  
-- giving sentence starters
-- designing reflective prompts
--teaching SMART goals and having student make SMART goals that can be re-addressed over time so they can see how far they have come.
--sharing reflections with their peers
-- modeling reflective thinking

When we started our Action Research in School Settings class we began by writing a theory of action draft. While working on this draft I realized that not only did I need to get my students look at the feedback, I needed to explicitly teach them how to read a
rubric and give feedback to each other as well as provide opportunities for students to reflect upon their work.  I also grew in my thinking and writing of rubrics in that I now look at what I want my students to accomplish and put that in my “meet standard” category and work from there in creating the expectations of the other levels.

Then we presented our process and our findings to our classmates through a presentation and by writing our analysis and reflection of our action research.  Although by looking at my rubric (yellow - baseline, blue - conclusion), you can see my students did make some progress during this two-month period of time.  But, by continuing with these practices throughout the year I saw many more of my students meet or exceeding standard in these categories and this transferred to their increased scores for using reasoning in their writing which was our grade level/department growth goal .

Applying Research to School Settings

Additionally, through the Applying Research in School Settings class, I have learned how to evaluation professional articles more thoroughly. This is an important skill to have a as leadership leader/educational coach since those who we lead expect us to do our due diligence when reading and using articles in our professional trainings.   As teacher leaders/coaches we will be gathering information for teachers so we want to make sure the research articles we are gathering have good data to backup their claims. Therefore, it is important for us to know what primary sources/studies they used, identify bias, determine if the sampling is reasonable, and determine their reliability.  

While taking this class we had two opportunities to do this.  The first article critique was for an article called  “Investigating Technology-Enhanced Teacher Professional Development in Rural, High-Poverty Middle Schools” by Blanchard, LePrevost, Tolin and Gutierrez. To help us to critique this article our professor gave us a set of questions to help guide our thinking.  As we worked through those questions I learned how to identify the research questions and hypotheses of the researchers even if they weren’t very clear in the article. It also gave me a better understanding of theoretical and conceptual studies -- a theoretical study is one that is based on a theory and a conceptual study is based on a particular concept.  In this case the study was looking to see if schools have several technological trained teachers and technology will students, particularly African American students, do better on state testing.   We then identified the representation and bias of the research samplings as well as how the sampling was selected and how the sampling may have affected the study and/or conclusions. Additionally, we  determined the reliability of the tools used and validity of the results. Then we went back and looked at the study method, limitations and conclusions of the researchers and critiqued them. As a result doing this I realized not to just accept what researchers say in their article, but to question it more since their conclusions didn’t match up with the implied research questions and hypotheses as well as having other factors that might have influenced their results.

Then we had the opportunity to do a second article critique of a primary article about (Positive Behavior Intervention Systems) PBIS and had to decide if it could be used to back up a secondary article about PBIS as our final.  Once again, it reinforced the idea that just because it has been published it doesn’t mean that it is a great study as while going through the primary article as a class we saw many flaws.  Having this additional practice of critiquing of articles improved my comfort level of doing so and I can see the practical applications when being a teacher leader/educational coach.

For our data analysis assignment, in this class,  we used scatter plots that showed end of year Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test results for the years of 2015 and 2016 which compared North Shore School District with other school districts in the state of Washington in order to identify observations and wonderings.   This was relatively easy for me since in readings, class lectures and online discussions we had learned about scatter plots and identifying the hypothesis based on the x- and y-axis as well as my experience in district data analysis meetings I had the opportunity to look at scatter plots and make observations and wonderings.

How Action Research is Supported by Research

At the beginning of starting this master’s program, I had never heard of "action research, but as I have gone through classes, I have noticed it in more and more of the articles I have read in professional magazines such the article entitled “Taking Beautiful RISKS in Education: To Support Students’ Creativity,   Educators Must Question Assumptions and Instill a Sense
of Possibility” which I summarized for my Applying Research in School Settings class. Also, the article “Choose your own Adventure: Action Research for PD” showed how action research valued teacher’s curiosity to improve their practices, made them think about what they wanted to learn so they could refine their questions, established trust and motivation between peers and most importantly let the results affect their teaching practices.    

Overall Impact

As I said earlier, I think that these experiences have made the practice of using action research to improve my teaching practices something to embrace and use.  And by learning how to critique articles I can do a better job on my literature review part of the process. By experiencing the process of doing an action research project and critiquing articles that are based on this process I think that I know more questions to ask and have a better understanding of how it works and as result can share it with others.

References

Beghetto, R. A.. (2018). Taking beautiful RISKS in education: To support students’ creativity,
     educators must question assumptions and instill a sense of possibility. Educational
     Leadership, 76(4), 18–24.

Blanchard, M. R., LePrevost, C. E., Tolin, A. D., & Gutierrez, K. S. (2016, April). Investigating technology-enhanced teacher professional development in rural, high-poverty middle schools. Educational Researcher, 45(03), 207-220.

Dodman, S., Zuidema, E..., & Kleiman, A. (2018). Choose your own adventure: Action research for PD. Educational Leadership, 76(3), 72–76.

Ravid, R. (2015). Practical statistics for educators (5th Edition). Landham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield Publishers, Inc

Scott TM, & Barrett SB. (2004). Using staff and student time engaged in disciplinary procedures to evaluate the impact of school-wide PBS. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 6(1), 21–27.

Skiba, R., & Sprague, J. (2008). Safety without suspensions. Educational Leadership, 66(1), 38–43.

Vannice, B.  (2019, January 11).  Educational Coach Interview [Personal interview]