Week 5 Reflections

This research course has been a great learning experience for me. I somewhat dreaded it at first. I began to feel at ease and excited about what we would be learning in this course after one of our early readings in the Dana text. She seemed to sum up my feelings of dread as “baggage” of the term research. She nailed my thoughts exactly with her words describing what images the term research conjured up, “long hours in the library”, and “crunching numbers”. Dana, N. F. (2009) After reading this, I new I would learn a great deal from this course.
I found the assignments in this course were well designed and walked us through how to begin an action research inquiry. As we built our knowledge of what research was and how it could help our school and us as leaders, we completed steps toward the goal of conducting our own action research. The readings were very helpful and practical and will be a resource for us as we continue to conduct more action research inquiries. The Harris text really gave direction as it laid out steps for developing a topic that our school or district might need action research inquiry. I really found the Strategies for Sustaining Improvement interesting and helpful. The Force Field Analysis, Delphi Method, Nominal Group Technique and Care Model very useful and practical. They undoubtedly will lead to school improvement. Harris, S., Edmonson, S., & Combs, J. (2010). It seemed very logical when reading these methods, especially the Force Field Analysis method which says, “In order for change to occur, the driving forces for the change must exceed the resisting forces against the change.” Harris, S., Edmonson, S., & Combs, J. (p. 94, 2010)
Through this course, I have discovered the value that a blog can provide. Having people share their comments on my blog and give advice or recommendations to my action plan was very helpful. I plan to continue this throughout my research and will include its use in other research I may conduct. Along the same lines, I found the discussion boards to be interesting and helpful. I found it interesting to read the other action research topics that my colleagues were developing. I can see that networking with other leaders is an important avenue for school growth and professional improvement. Because my experiences have been at a private school I felt less knowledgeable about what public schools were doing in the area of social media tools in education. I was thankful when my colleague, Sandra Kendall posted in the week 3 Discussion Board a comment on my post referencing a spreadsheet of her previous research she had conducted on schools using Twitter and a listing of schools that had Facebook pages.
In this last week, I found the Quality Indicators for Practitioner Research listed in the Dana text very thorough in its review of an action plan. They are very useful in making sure that your research results in action. Also the importance of making your work transferable to others really made an impression on me.

Dana, N. F. (2009). Leading With Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Pubs.

Harris, S., Edmonson, S., & Combs, J. (2010). Examining What We Do To Improve Our Schools: Eight Steps from Analysis to Action. Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education.