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Reasons for Using Action Research

1) CONTEXTUALISES PROFESSIONAL LEARNING Professional learning becomes meaningful and relevant for staff. Teachers can target what is important for them and their students at the current time. 2) EMPOWERS STAFF AND BUILDS CAPACITY Teachers are given the tools and support to find the answers to problems or questions, try different teaching strategies, gather and discuss relevant sources of information and reflect on success with no fear of failure. Action Research builds trust amongst staff. 3) BUILDS COLLEGIAL RELATIONSHIPS Staff share information, strategies and ownership of problems and students across the school. Students with learning difficulties or behaviour problems are no longer seen as the sole responsibility of their teacher. Staff support each other in developing relevant programs and resources. 4) ENSURES DEDICATED TIME AND RESOURCES FOR DIALOGUE Making dialogue and reflection a priority ensures staff are given opportunities across the week and term to consult each other and discuss issues. 5) ACKNOWLEDGES TEACHER SKILLS AND EXPERTISE Builds knowledge of effective teaching and evidence based practices from the ground up. Acknowledges the experience and professional knowledge that all staff within the school already have. Instead of working in the traditional way of reading academic research and trying to apply or generalise it to your classroom, Action Research starts with the issues important to individual teachers. The strategies developed straight away have aplicability to your classroom. 6) ALLOWS STAFF TO TAKE CONTROL OF ACCOUNTABILITY Allows teachers to justify what they are doing in their classrooms through the collection and annalysis of data. Action Research provides the 'bigger picture' in terms of 'value added' student learning to parents and the school community as opposed to just relying on external measures such as NAPLAN data. 7) BUILDS OWNERSHIP Allows teachers to take ownership and control over their Professional Learning as they are posing the questions and deciding how they will gather information and trial strategies. The areas and type of feedback is determined by the teacher initiating the Action Research Project. 8) FOCUSSES PROFESSIONAL LEARNING ON STUDENT LEARNING Action Research focusses Professional Learning on Teaching and Learning and improving student outcomes. Teachers are able to look at targeting student learning across the school, grade, classrom, cohorts of students and individual students. The data collected through an Action Research Project enables staff to measure learning and make decisions to improve learning for these groups of students. 9) SUPPORTS CHANGE AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT Action Research suports change and continuous improvement within schools by allowing staff to identify key issues and possible targets for change, gather information with which to make decisions, provide possible strategies, supports the collection of data and evaluation. 10) MOTIVATES STAFF Action Research motivates staff to continue to improve their practice, try new ideas and reflect on their own teaching. It keeps teaching new and exciting!!!
 * 10 REASONS FOR USING ACTION RESEARCH

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2/6/10 I came across this paper on 'Making a Difference', presented at the ACER conference in 2003, which examined effect sizes and Teacher Quality. It was interesting because it was disputing the evidence of using National Testing to determine Teacher Quality and looking at identifying a profile and some specific behaviours that 'expert' teachers demonstrate in their teaching. Looking at what happens in a lesson, talking to the teacher to ascertain thought processes, student interview, work samples etc. were used to identify expert teachers as opposed to experienced teachers. The article pointed out that they were not talking about bad or innefective teachers when they referred to experienced teachers but were looking at what takes a teacher to the next level in their professional development.

Interesting reading which, even though we are a special setting, has some application for us I think.



15/09/10

Check out this website. It has great resources for teaching students about healthy eating and cooking. The videos are especially good.

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30/3/2011

For all you Boardmaker users out there - check out this website for some great Boardmaker worksheets and IWB lessons. Resources are all made by teachers for use in their classrooms and then put up on this site for sharing. I know there are a couple of people at our school who are making top quality resources that could be shared in return.

Best of all, the resources are free and already appropriate for the needs of our students (don't need modifying).

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