Recently I have learned that the process I have been using to improve students' successes in the Science classroom has a name. Researchers call this process "Action Research". Action research as described by Nancy Fichtman Dana is a continuous process of identifying problems or issues, or posing questions about how to improve a school, "collecting data to gain insights into their wonderings, analyzing the data along with reading relevant literature, making changes in practice based on new understandings", and then communicating what you learned to others (Dana, 2009). She communicates that this process is beneficial to principals of schools in making improvement to overall practices of teachers, providing students and staff members a role model of a life long learner, helps to hurtle administrators toward change by giving them ownership of the knowledge constructed, and promotes principals to a proactive leader, rather than a reactive manager (Dana, 2009.) One positive aspect of this process I discussed with a collegue is in order to change something for he better, we have to know where in our problesm lie. When administrators or teams within a school are the ones who are doing the research and createing a plan for improvement the probability of positive change is greater becasue they are close to the situation, where as, outside professionals may have great ideas, but their knowledge of "our campus" is limited. I am hoping to use action research on my campus to increase interest and acheivement in Science for all students, but with a particular focus on our female population. We made tremendous gains in acheivement in science last year, but our female population still trailed our male population by 17%. This huge descrepency causes me to wonder! i hope to level the playing feild for girls, but at the same time increase success for all subpopulations through action research this year.
Dana Fichman, Nancy (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press
Educational leaders can use blogging to increase collaboration in their endeavors for improvement. I know secretly we all want to have the best school, but hopefully most of us are in this profession to improve the quality of life for all communities and provide the best education possible for all students, young and old. Communication through blogging will not only give us all great ideas for improving our own campuses by reading what others are doing, but will provide additional support as we embark on our own improvement adventures through others comments about what we are doing, advising us what we may want to consider, or providing one another books, or other resourses that might help us in our quests.
