Action Reaction in Action

    When I first read the term Action Research in our week 1 assignment an overwhelming feeling to over my body and my stress level began to rise.  Research, I hate doing research which is ironic being a science teacher.  As I began reading Leading with Passion and Knowledge by Nancy Fichtman Dana when I learned what action research was my level of stress went down.  I was no longer intimidated by action research.  Action research is “a systematic, intentional study of one’s own professional practice.” (Dana, 2009)  I learned that action research is inquiry learning for improvement.  Through action research you are the researcher and have to reflect on the good and bad things you have done.  Action research will not be successful if you don’t reflect on your practices. 

     I feel many of us use action research to some extent all the time in our classroom when we reflect about how well a lesson went, how our students did on a test, or how can we resolve issues in our class or within our campus.  I will be using action research to look areas that I need to improve in.  I will be looking at how to improve my special students success on assessments.  I follow their IEP but they are not performing well.  I have been reflecting and planning how I can improve my teaching to reach my special education students.  Having a son with a learning disability and seeing how horrible he did on STAAR woke me up.  I have failed my students and following an IEP is not enough.           

    Through action research I hope to gain knowledge that will help solve problems we have on campus and make our professional development more meaningful.  I learned action research is not pointing out the problem and relying on outsiders to tell me how to fix my problems but it is a “movement that focuses on the concerns of practitioners and engages practitioners in the design, data collection, and interpretation of data around their question.” (Dana, 2009)