Action Research Plan

How can I, as Special Education teacher, help General Education teachers become more effective in the implementation and documentation of strategies to support students with special needs?

Goal: My goal is to find the best combination of professional development approaches in order to provide general education teachers with the information and skills needed to appropriately and efficiently implement and document strategies for students with special needs. As a result of improved understanding, teachers will be able to better serve their students with special needs and to help students be more successful

Activities: Professional Development, Observations/Walk-throughs and anecdotal notes, Create documents to aid teachers in the implementation and documentation of strategies

Resources: Realted literature and presentations (PowerPoint, etc), sample documents, grade level schedules, alloted time for group and/or one to one meetings and reflections


Timeline: August 2011 to May 2012

REASON TO REFLECT AND SHARE

As a teacher, I often ask my students to reflect on what they have learned, what progress have the made, and how they can make improvements. I do this because it is best practice. Reflection helps a student to take a step back and take a clear look at what he/she has been doing and how his/her actions have impacted their understanding of the material. Through reflection, those actions become more meaningful and more productive. My primary goal as an educator is to teach skills that will help them be life-long learners and to continually grow as students, learners and individuals. Having students reflect upon their actions, to evaluate the effectiveness of those actions and to design a new action plan helps students to continually asses, modify and reassess what they are doing so that they can be successful. I believe this holds true for educators and administrators, as well. We have so many demands from many different sources on us. Taking a step back by taking time to reflect helps us to maintain sight of our ultimate goal and to take a less subjective look at what is working and what is not. Reflection is an important part of action research for that very reason.
Blogging is an effective way to share our thoughts and ideas. By sharing we can get feedback and support form other administrators. Others may have had similar concerns/issues, while others can provide a fresh, objective viewpoint. Blogging is another means of taking the principal out of the isolation of day-to-day operations of school and provides a support network of and collaboration with peers.

ACTION RESEARCH

As adminstrators and educators we have many demands placed upon us. While trying to perform all of our duties and trying to keep up with demands from many different sources, we must always keep an eye on our goal and move towards it. That goal is student success. To make sure that we are continuing on the right path and that our efforts are productive, we must constantly take time to reflect and to evaluate the effectiveness of our actions. We routinely implement new strategies based on traditional research. Many great strategies and approaches for student success have come from traditional research of what works and what doesn't. However, as teachers, we want to help our students become successful, life-long learners, and we must do the same. Using action research is the way to do that. Action research is different from traditional research in that the inquiry and data collection is performed by the practitioner, not theorists. With action research, the administrator or teacher reflects upon his/her actions, poses questions/wonderings, collects data that reflects impact of our acions, assesses that information and plans accordingly to make any necessary changes in action in order to remain effective. Constantly reflecting upon our teaching practices and assessing what is working and what is not helps us to continually learn to become better, more effective educators. While traditional research has provided many beneficial changes in education, it cannot provide the same intimate level of reflection and assessment that action research can.Effective change is more likely to come from a reflective practitioner rather than an educator or administrator that has been given suggestions from a theorists. We are the ones in the classroom working directly with the students and the community. While traditional research is very beneficial, it does not apply to every situation, every campus and every student. With action research, administrators and educators are able to use reflection to take a look at their own actions in relation to their own students.