8 Steps from Analysis to Action

1.   Examining the work: Setting the Foundation – I had a lot of ideas that I was playing with when thinking about my action research project.  I decided to narrow it down by looking at things that are directly affected by my work with homebound students.  I want to find out how we can better assist them in all areas to ensure their success.  After talking to my supervisor about some of my ideas, she helped me to further develop one and gave me some suggestions on who to talk to and how to go about developing and implementing a plan to put my action research into practice.  The topic that we decided on is to put a plan into place on the campus for homebound students who have been out for an extended period of time in order to ensure their success when they return to their home school.  My site supervisor gave me some ideas about how I could go about implementing this type of plan.  She also gave me a lot of feedback about how this could help so many of our students who struggle making the transition back to school.  I feel confident about my decision and am really looking forward to actually putting my plan to practice with a few of my students who are looking at going back to their campus later on this semester or at the beginning of next semester after being out for an extended period of time.  I hope that my plan will help their transition be smoother and will help keep them on track to continue moving forward with their education.  My plan will include working with the individual campuses, with the counselor, teachers, and administrators to facilitate things with the student and give them suggestions and ideas on how to best help my students get back into the swing of things on their campus.  2.  Analyzing data – Looking at the particular type of action research I will be conducting there isn’t a ton of quantitative data involved, I will however have plenty of data to choose from when I add it to the qualitative data.  I will be looking at test scores, grades, and academic performance as well as conducting an extensive amount of interviews, surveys and evaluations to gather as much data as possible about each of my students that I will be following in order to provide the best support for them.  I expect to get a fair amount of my data from the people that are most involved and have the most contact with my students, their teachers, administrators, counselors and parents as well as the students themselves.  A lot of the data I will be looking at will be subjective and will involve how the student is feeling and how others think they are adapting.  3.  Developing deeper understanding – For my particular action research this will go hand in hand with analyzing data, as a fair amount of my data will be qualitative.  This will include like mentioned previously, interviews, surveys, observations and evaluations.  I also plan to engage in some sessions of sharing my plans and discussing them with my colleagues as well as with some of the professionals involved with my students in order to get feedback and gather input and suggestions they think could be helpful additions to my plan.  4.  Engaging in Self-Reflection – I intend to engage in self-reflection by taking frequent notes during interviews/meetings and then following up on these observations, meetings, or anything else in my plan with journaling.  I plan to put my journaling in my blog in order to have a place to gather my thoughts and be able to look back and see the progress that has been made as well as pick up on possible mistakes or things that need to be adjusted.  Another reason I plan to put my journaling in my blog is in order to get feedback and suggestions from others who are also conducting action research, it is always good to have other’s perspectives and ideas when you are entrenched in a project and may not be as objective as you need to be.  5.  Exploring Programmatic Patterns – One of the first things I am doing before I even begin my action research plan is to meet with my site supervisor so that she can review my plan and give me suggestions and feedback as she has been in homebound for many years and knows a lot about students transitioning back to campus.  She also knows the counselors and administrators I will be working with very well and can give me some tips on how to best work with them.  I will also be spending a generous amount of time identifying data and getting opinions from experts in different subjects/areas as to how/what we can do to improve my plan.  I will determine the appropriate measures that need to be taken to effectively implement my plan and make it as successful as possible.  6.  Determining direction – One of the things that I want to focus on and make sure that I am constantly monitoring is my direction, timeline and progress.  I plan to continually take a step back and make sure that the direction my action research is taking is the direction that I intended.  Am I looking at the right data?  Am I using the data to gather useful information and make appropriate changes?  I will work with the administrators and counselors to make sure that I am using all the tools and resources available to best implement my plan at each different campus.  I will continually and periodically share my findings and progress with my colleagues and site supervisor as a way to check my progress and direction and also get feedback/suggestions as to anything that can be adjusted as I move along in my plan.  I am also planning to keep a close eye on my timeline as I want to make sure that my timeline and goals are realistic and attainable.  7.  Taking action for school improvement – I am using the 7.1 template to help guide my action research, I found the template the most appropriate and all inclusive for the type of research I am conducting.  I plan on sharing my plan with key people that will be assisting me in my action research and asking for feedback/suggestions to see if anything needs to be tweaked or can be improved.  I will follow this plan, using it as guide to help me not lose sight of my goal and not deviate too much from my plan so as not to get side tracked.  I plan to take action by making a difference in the lives of my students hopefully giving them a better shot at continued success as they move through their education.  8.  Sustaining improvement – I plan on learning a lot from this action research project.  I intend to do a good amount of sharing with colleagues and anyone else that is involved with my project so that they can follow along and see what we are doing.  I would like to have the opportunity to share at a principals meeting for the district or some other place where I will have an audience of administrators to allow them the opportunity to implement my plan on their campuses if it turns out that it had a positive outcome with the students I will be following.  I’m hoping that engaging in this action research project will teach me the value and importance of action research as well as to become comfortable enough with it to want to continue using it throughout my professional career.