EDU 707 Educational Research
INTRODUCTION
During the Fall of 2016, I took a course titled EDUC 707: Educational Research. The purpose of the course was to provide students with a basic understanding of educational research. I was asked to identify a significant problem, need, or area of interest as a focus, and create an action research plan. I was also asked to review relevant professional literature to determine current practice and theory in the area of our action research. Once the action research plan was created, I put the plan into practice. Students of this class were required to choose three forms of data (triangulation) to collect, and then analyzed to determine the impact of the action plan on students’ learning.
STANDARDS
WI Teacher Standards:
Standard 3: Teachers understand that children learn differently
Standard 7: Teachers are able to plan different kinds of lessons
Standard 8: Teachers know how to test for student progress
IRA Standards:
IRA Standard 1: Candidates understand the theoretical and evidence-based foundations of reading and writing processes and instruction.
IRA Standard 3: Candidates use a variety of assessment tools and practices to plan and evaluate effective reading and writing instruction.
Standard 5: Candidates create a literate environment that fosters reading and writing by integrating foundational knowledge, instructional practices, approaches and methods, curriculum materials, and the appropriate use of assessments.
REFLECTION
I learned many valuable pieces of information through my action research. My students in the “average” category (students 3 and 4) made the most consistent growth over the five week period. Students in the “high” category (students 1 and 2), made inconsistent growth over the five week period. The “high” students have proven to have high writing stamina, which positively affects word count. Students in the “low” category made the least amount of growth in each category over the five week period.
Upon reflecting on my three points of data collection, I feel that I should have included a “content” category, as the overall content of my students’ writing has greatly improved since the start of the school year. This holds especially true for my lowest two writers (students 5 and 6); although their sentence fluency, word choice and word count are greatly lacking, these two writers’ content has increased by leaps and bounds, and I felt disappointed that their data did not reflect how much these two writers have grown in this category.
