Action!

One of the things I plan to do when I return to full-time teaching is to do research, specifically action research. I am biased towards action research, very likely because I consider myself a practical person. I want to find out how I can make things related to my work better, and action research is most suited for this purpose.

Before embarking on actual researching, I need to consolidate concepts and processes to make my activities sound and systematic. Here are some questions, the answers to which should make for a formal outlining of important understanding:

• What is action research? (What are the various definitions?)
  
• How is it different from other types of research? (What are the strengths and the weaknesses?)
• What happens in an action research? (What are the steps in the process?)
• What are the benefits of action research? (What are the effects on the students, the teachers, the staff, and the College?)

Regarding the problems one can work on:

• What are possible problems? (What are the characteristics of "good" problems?)

Regarding collecting, organizing, interpreting, and acting based on data:

• How does one collect data properly? (And first, which data to collect?)
  
• What are the best ways of presenting data?
• How does one go about interpreting data?
• How does one use data to plot future actions? (When does reflection occur?)

Future entries in this blog will contain my musings on these and other additional questions. Lights? Camera?