Monday, August 30, 2010

Action Research Project Update

Just getting prepared to administer my pre-test for my action research project over the "effectiveness of our science labs" in our high school. I have a pre-test that is done over the computer to evaluate students knowledge of the skills that are required on the Science TAKS Test. I will be administering these tests I hope on friday of this week. This will be the beginning of my project and will be followed closely by my collection of course grade data on my students in previous science classes. I hope that everyone's projects are going well and I will be back to share more soon!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

5301 Course Highlights

Just wanted to post my own personal highlights from our EDLD 5301 Course. These are just a few of the things that stand out in my mind from the last five weeks. I have learned many new things in this course that will help me out in the future as an administrator. I appreciate all the feedback that my colleagues have given me as well throughout this course.
Have a great day and I will talk to you soon!

I have learned a lot of new information during the EDLD 5301 Course. I look forward to being able to utilize this information in the future as I pursue a career in administration.
Learning how to write blogs and how to use them to benefit myself as well as others is an important skill that I am starting to develop. The book “Leading With Passion and Knowledge” by Nancy Dana has been very beneficial to me in learning about blogs and how to use them(p.149-151). I believe that I will continue to improve in regard to being able to utilize blogs effectively.
The use of the discussion boards has also helped me in this course. I have been able to use the feedback of other students to help me analyze my research project and identify possible problems that I may encounter in the future. One of the comments that I received on the discussion board prompted me to reconsider one of my possible research topics and focus on another problem area for study.
The video interviews of educational administrators that we watched during this course also were beneficial to me. Dr. Timothy Chargois who is the Director of Research, Planning and Development for Beaumont ISD brought to my attention the importance of taking our research data and putting it into immediate use. Dr. Chargois made the point that we cannot wait for a year to make changes. We need to be able to take the data we have and make immediate changes to improve student learning. This is an important statement that I believe is very relevant to learning in our schools.
In “Leading With Passion and Knowledge” Nancy Dana provided some good information on the different ways that we can share our research and what the benefits of sharing research are for other educators(p. 135-169).
Harris, Edmondson, and Combs discussed “Strategies for Sustaining Improvement” including Force Field Analysis, the Delphi Method, Nominal Group Technique, and the CARE model(Examining What We Do To Improve Our Schools, p. 91-103). These different strategies for sustaining improvement will be a part of my future data collection techniques that I will use in my research.
These are just some of the highlights of the EDLD 5301 Course that stand out in my mind. As a future administrator I realize that I will be continually learning throughout my career. I believe that this course has been a good start in helping me to understand how action research is conducted and how it can be used to help improve our schools.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

The journey continues......

I have still been in the process of refining my action research project for the last week. I have been examining the data collection process that I will need to use and looking at how I can make sure that I will be able to draw valid conclusions from my research. There are many variables that can affect data that must be considered when conducting research and drawing conclusions from that research. With that being said I believe that my project that is evaluating the effectiveness of our science labs will be very beneficial to our school and our science program in general.
I want to thank everyone who has offered suggestions and tips and please continue to do so! I look foward to speaking with you again soon!