Jeffrey S. Beaudry
Abstract
The article provides a definition of action research and details deeper learning strategies I include in an action research graduate course I teach. Components of an evidence-based, four-part framework used in the course to forward deeper learning are: create a community of collective efficacy, develop students’ learning strategies, provide clarity, and provide feedback.
I teach a graduate level course in action research for practicing teachers. With action research, researchers confront an aspect of their practice they wish to enhance or a problem related to their practice they wish to solve. The researchers formulate one or more research questions. They design and implement a study based on qualitative and quantitative evidence, and communicate their findings to others. My graduate students reflect on their teaching and what they wish to improve. Though the course participants learn how to apply specific research tools to gather evidence and they learn principles of action research planning, the final design of their action research is in their hands, as they find the best match of research questions and research methods.
Engaging in action research fosters deeper professional learning. Conducting action research uses and strengthens deeper learning indicators: critical thinking and creativity for problem-solving, gaining and being able to use knowledge, communications, and usually collaboration. It entails critical self-reflection on one’s professional practice, and a matching action research design. It is an iterative process involving action – engagement with the challenge and collection of evidence, reflection – analysis and evaluation of evidence, and re-design to accommodate insights, reactions, and new challenges. Often action research occurs among a community of professional learners who collaborate to develop collective efficacy.
Deeper Learning Teaching Strategies
Beyond my students experiencing deeper learning through their conducting action research, I also want to forward their deeper learning through our course culture and activities. To create a deeper learning environment, I use strategies that can be categorized within a four-part high-impact teaching framework:
- Create and sustain a community of learners’ collective efficacy.
- Develop students’ metacognitive learning strategies.
- Continually attend to my clarity as a teacher and provide clear learning intentions.
- Use regular, differentiated use of teacher feedback and peer feedback on skills, processes, and written products.
(Hattie, 2009; Hattie, 2015; Fisher, Fry, & Hattie, 2016; McCafferty & Beaudry, 2018)
Community of learners’ collective efficacy. I use multiple teaching techniques to develop the learning community. The first is to develop professional relationships. I use small and large group formats, and I always address each student directly, thanking them for their contributions, and answering their questions in the moment. We have peer learning and feedback, and weekly debriefing, all facilitated by the instructor. Every student knows I am developing a relationship with them, individually and as part of a community of learners.
I rely on an equity-based approach to communications to develop collective efficacy. Time is allotted for each student to discuss what they have read, in pairs or in jigsaw groups, and to reflect on their own learning and progress as an action researcher-in-progress. Jigsaw groups with specific reading prompts support close, deep reading. At the end of class, we often have a whip-around for closure. I use these prompts, “What have I learned? What questions do I have?” Students may respond to each other, but I always address each one individually.
The structured dialogues validate each individual participant, give participants a timely opportunity to share experiences, both successes and challenges, mark their progress, and strengthen their identity in our action research community. I have students use social learning technology like Padlet and Google Jamboard to share reflections and weekly progress updates. An indicator of success is that students are busy talking well beyond time limits, often solving problems related to their action research, as well as other, related problems. Participants quickly develop empathy as they progressively share more of their own experiences.
Develop students’ metacognitive learning strategies. Deeper learning goes hand-in-hand with meta-cognitive learning strategies, as participants bridge surface learning – new knowledge and skills, with the complexities of action research design. Students are asked to set goals for their action research and revise their goals throughout the course. A strategy to make goal setting more tangible is the use of developmental writing examples, to show what draft writing looks like.
Concept maps are used for several purposes. First, students construct a map to answer the question, “Who am I as a learner?” As we share each map in a gallery walk, or a table top display, we all see the capacity and strengths of the whole group.To this I add the questions, “Who am I as a researcher? What do I know about my topic?” A concept map of their topic is useful to identify variables for use in quantitative analysis, and to identify pre-determined categories for qualitative data analysis. Students can add new emergent categories, new unanticipated themes from the data to their maps of qualitative data. If a student’s concept map illuminates a student’s misconceptions about action research, I can clear up the confusion. Another powerful visual representation is a timeline of course participants’ action research process.
Teacher clarity and clear learning intentions. Deeper learning is more likely to occur when participants have a clear idea of the expectations. Course objectives, which are anchored to the InTASC model, are communicated to the students. I have short videos of former students explaining their action research projects, and often invite students to give in-class presentations of their action research.
At the outset of the course, participants see multiple student examples from previous classes to show what action research looks like. To encourage my graduate students as writers, the examples are curated into sets of 1-pagers, 3-pagers, 8-pagers, and final papers. (Why the “pager” label? Even in graduate courses the first question about writing is … ‘how many pages?’) Using this developmental writing process, also helps me focus my feedback, which is provided on the Next Steps Rubric (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Next Steps Rubric
© 2022 J. Beaudry
Rubric for Action Research Paper, Action Research EDU 667 / 643
Name:
| ☆ Your writing has… ☆ ☆ | Action Research Proposal-to-Paper: Final Paper I can… | ↗↗ Some things to work on… |
| Introduce the topic • Frame my topic in general terms; what are the big ideas? • Introduce the connections to my professional interests, practice, and policy | ||
| Review relevant literature • Explain the context for the study, what is the reason(s) this interests you? • Explains key ideas and the connections to my professional interests, practice, and policy using articles, reports, video/media, and books 1-pager contains the above elements • Explain the varieties and uses of research methods from prior research on your topic; cite specific examples. • Describe how prior use of methods influences your proposed study design (e.g., have you found useful models of designs that have helped you?); cite specific examples | ||
| Identify Methods • Identify the population’s traits and characteristics, and specify the sample to be studied (who?) • Sampling procedures are explained – target sample size (how many?) and sampling strategy (how?) • Data collection methods for qualitative (interviews, observations, artifacts) and quantitative (measurement surveys, tests, indicators), (See data analysis) • Clear insight into data collection strategies including discussion of validity and reliability of quantitative measures, and reducing researcher bias and subjectivity for qualitative data gathering 3-pager contains the above elements | ||
| Design Data Analysis Strategies • Explain qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods design (sequential OR concurrent) • Sequential – qualitative follows quantitative or reverse • Concurrent – qualitative and quantitative occur simultaneously and are • Indicate, briefly, how you would analyze the quantitative and qualitative data 8-pager contains the above elements • Data is analyzed, presented in text, and in visual representations | ||
| References • Use APA format to list 1. Articles (primary and narrative) 2. Policy studies 3. Reviews 4. Books 5. Videos 6. Other |
Regular, differentiated use of teacher feedback and peer feedback. Feedback supports deeper learning since it improves action research deeper learning skills like interviewing, data analysis, and clear writing. Focused feedback helps students set realistic, feasible, measurable goals. For interviewing and for writing, it is most productive if I provide models, and then provide direct feedback on my students’ interview analysis and their drafts.
My feedback for the 1-, 3-, and 8-pager drafts focuses more on the development and organization of content, and less on grammar and surface features. This is a timesaver for me, as I can focus my feedback on idea and skill development, with each short draft. I let students polish the content, organization, sentence fluency and grammatical features in successive stages. I provide my feedback on a special type of rubric, the Next Steps Rubric (figure 1). Students’ attention to sentences, spelling, and grammar increases as they build their confidence to write about action research. By the time I read the final product, I am better able to discern students’ insights because the draft writing process has already addressed misconceptions and flaws in reasoning.
My favorite process for providing feedback is asking questions. For example, instead of the statement, “You must have two quotes,” I might write, “How can you use different quotes from your interviews as evidence in your analysis?”
Peer feedback is reserved for small groups, and think-pair-share discussions, usually focusing on the task of action research. Social/emotional support is a key feature. Peer learning helps participants build professional relationships around action research. I would rather students have discussions with each other about their action research than adding the demand for peer reading and feedback on writing drafts.
Action research deeper learning is a result of process thinking, and is evidenced by the progress in written products. In this approach, regularly scheduled, descriptive feedback occurs as writing progresses in multiple draft stages. The early “mess” and “error” writing is welcomed as the participants grapple with implementation of their action research. This is meant to shift the cognitive load from the expectations of perfect writing to the usefulness to action research of receiving feedback.
Reflections
Action research is an acknowledged approach to the improvement of education practice, especially when it is supported by a professional learning community. Participants finish their action research empowered to engage in more complex, challenging work. For many participants their action research is the learning experience that brings all the course work together, integrating prior knowledge from their graduate learning with the challenge of learner-centered inquiry.
I began teaching this course in 2003. The deeper learning strategies detailed in this article represent my biggest areas of growth to date, and there is room for improvement. For example, my students are excited to realize that they can conduct mixed methods research that brings interviewing and observations together with grades, interim benchmarks, test scores, and other quantitative data. I find they want to see more examples of this kind of mixed methods research. They also would like to examine more models that represent learning progressions of writing.
My practices have evolved due to my own self-reflection on action research, and the development of my own action research efficacy. My current goal is to work with colleagues to do an equity audit of action research methods, to apply the principles of diversity and equity to action research methods. I will continue to explore deeper learning strategies as I seek to balance my role as teacher and action research mentor.
References
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 studies relating to achievement. Routledge.
Fisher, D., Frey, N, & Hattie, J. (2015). Visible learning for literacy impact: Implementing the practices that work best to accelerate learning. Corwin.
McCafferty, A.S. & Beaudry, J. (2018). Teaching strategies to create assessment-literate learners. Corwin.
Appendix
Examples of My Students’ Action Research
Amy studied approaches to teaching writing, she interviewed teachers who had experienced the workshop model of peer feedback; asking about other ways to mentor writing.
Janna teaches in an alternative education program in high school relying heavily on service learning projects with a large component of outdoor learning. She interviewed teaching colleagues with regular education classrooms, and gained insights into their biases towards outdoor learning.
James studied the influence of hybrid classrooms, in-person and remote learning caused by COVID-19, on student engagement. James combined evidence from teachers’ interviews with quantitative data from students’ benchmark testing scores.
Jeffrey S. Beaudry, PhD, is a Professor in the Educational Leadership Department at the University of Southern Maine. His interests are research, especially action research, and the incorporation of arts-based methods like visual learning and visual literacy in research. His research textbook, Research Literacy (2016) employs visual learning strategies with complex research concepts.