The title of this course created some early apprehensions. I believed I would be spending five weeks analyzing someone’s generalized research and hypothesize how it could fit into various school situations. I was pleased to learn I was wrong. I believe what I have learned in this course is highly valuable and will make me a much better administrator. I am excited about my project and a little frustrated that this is my last course. I believe this would have been more meaningful as one of the earlier courses. Then, the research could be built in to the internship. It seems that the planning and revising was stretched out over five weeks. Spreading things out and giving time for actual research would make the learning more meaningful. It would also allow us to look at real data and use it in a research setting.
During the summer of 2009, shortly after beginning this program, I was fortunate enough to attend a summer institute on PLC’s by Solution Tree and Richard DuFour. The team that attended this conference was focused on the concepts that build successful PLC’s. During this institute, the idea of common assessments really intrigued me. During the 2009-10 school year, our focus was on building a PLC environment. This change was well received, so we considered the idea of adding common assessments to our campus. During the initial conversations, it became apparent that most of the leadership team believes that common assessments are another form of benchmark testing, just more frequent and at the campus level. This misconception is why I have chosen common assessments as a topic for my research. This belief will make buy-in from the teachers very difficult. As I examined information about common assessments I found these reasons for using them in PLC’s.
“In professional learning communities, collaborative teams of teachers create common assessments for three formative purposes. First, team-developed common assessments help identify curricular areas that need attention because many students are struggling. Second, they help each team member clarify strengths and weaknesses in his or her teaching and create a forum for teachers to learn form one another. Third, interim common assessments identify students who aren’t mastering the intended standards and need timely and systematic interventions” (Stiggins, & DuFour, 2009).
Being a science teacher, I thought of research as a controlled activity. I found Dana’s clarification of generalizability and transferability refreshing. The idea of using generalized research in education is stressful, but transferable research just makes sense. “It is not meant to be generalizable to all practitioners everywhere” (Dana, 2009). With my research, I can take the ideas I learned from DuFour’s presentations and transfer them to meet my campus needs. Dr. Jenkins seal my confidence in this type of research in week 2 when he stated, “Your goal in the significance of the study is to look to the future” (Arterbury & Jenkins, 2010). I am frustrated by the departments of transportation and education when they propose solutions that only address today’s problems, and do not prepare for the future.
The practice of action research is invaluable. Good teachers, coaches, and administrators are in an improvement cycle at all times. Action research practices help to refine these practices and ensure it is data based and increases improvement.
Stiggins, R., & DuFour, R. (2009). Maximizing the Power of Formative Assessments. Phi Delta Kappan, 90(9), 640-644. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
Dana, N.F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Arterbury, E, & Jenkins, S. (Producer). (2010). Week 2 video. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.lamar.epiclms.net
