EDLD 5301 Week 2

Many topics have been presented by classmates, professors, and other school leaders this week. It really opens your eyes to topics of interest that apply to your school and apply to other districts. Most districts have similar concerns and needs. This is reinforced in our reading of the nine common targets and themes of school-based action research. It is important to reach all learners and make sure your action research is practical or relevant to your needs.

Learning about Action Research and How Leaders may use Blogs

Action research can be used to help educators help improve their practices. The overall goal of educators is to improve school performance. They can do this by exploring areas through research that can be used to improve their effectiveness. A question is often developed, the educator collects and analyzes data, the results are shared, and as the educator explores one's own practice, they begin to understand how to make it better. Those planned changes are then monitored for improvements and analyzed for success. I plan to use this strategy of action research to improve the effective use of tutorials at my campus. As an educator that has participated in many PST (Problem Solving Team) meetings, one underlying problem that has been presented is the effective use of tutorials. Our campus has a built in tutorial time of 30 minutes in which teachers are to work directly with students. This time has been utilized for grading papers, make up work, etc. It is often not used for its purpose. An action research study may help teachers understand their own use of this time, understand how to make improvements, and make changes to improve their use of this tutorial time. The benefits of this action research study would be improvements in student learning. Students will have that time for working directly with the teacher one on one or in small groups for a small period of time that might not already be used.

This blog was designed for use in a research class for a master's program. Educational leaders can use these blogs sites to share ideas. A campus could use a blog for teachers to have the freedom to express ideas at their leisure for an issue on the campus. Not all teachers have the ability to meet at a set time to share their concerns or ideas. A blog could be used to gather input from all partipants without a set meeting time.