Still thinking of what to do for action research...

 The three possible action research topics that my supervisor and I discussed are professional development, parental involvement and student lexile growth.  The topic for professional development would be in regards to the current SIOP trainings that we are having for our district. The trainings cover the SIOP and model and we expect that the teachers take back the training and apply what they have learned.  We would like to see the results by seeing an improvement in the ELL STAAR scores.  The second topic is parental involvement. Every year we have two parental summits where we include all parents of ELL’s.  At these summits we try to have as many sessions as possible that will benefit the parents learn about their child’s education.  The parents that attend the summit enjoy the sessions and feel that they learn a lot.  The only problem that we see right now is that not too many parents attend the summit. Our question for this topic would be to find out how parental involvement and student achievement go hand in hand.  The third topic that we discussed is student lexile growth.  There is a program that we use at this time to raise the lexile level of ELL students.  At this time there are 20 campuses that use the program but there is low usage.  Our question for this topic would be what correlation we see between those schools that have high usage and the growth of the students’ lexile levels. 

My supervisor and I discussed these three topics and we came to consensus that the last topic would be the best for do have as my action research.  This will help us to determine how much growth we see in the students’ lexile levels.  The reason we liked this problem the most is because it is one of my initiatives that I work with closely and I will have a better chance of seeing what the outcome is. What do you think?

Action Research

Action research is a vital component of an administrators role in today's education field.  Research is no longer just going to the library and looking for information that is an overall solution to a common campus problem.  Action research is a systematic process that allows a team to look at the problems or questions at a campus level and take certain steps to attain a solution.  The process involves everyone in that team working together to attain results that are specific to the problem or question at hand. This process has many advantages for the team. The team gains the opportunity to work as a team and resolve a problem.  They also benefit from the reflection piece that is part of the action research because it is going on continuously.  This gives the team the chance to discuss what progress they see and if there are any changes that must be made or if they are on the right track.  All of the participants of the research action plan will also greatly benefit from the learning experiences that they gain as a result of participating in this process.  Action research should be considered by all administrators even though they may think they do not have time because they will see the impact that it can have at their campus.

Education leaders can use blogs to mimic a journal of thoughts.  It can be used to help them revisit ideas or thoughts that they may have had and make a connection to what they are currently thinking about. Leaders can think of it as their own personal ISN (interactive student notebook) because it can also serve as their journal of learning.