Action Research Plan

Action Research Plan

Research Goals and Objectives:
Goals: To increase parent involvement at the academic functions held at Cedar Creek Elementary

Objective 1: To determine the reasons behind parents’ lack of attendance at academic functions at our school
Objective 2: To uncover what we, as the staff of CCE, can do to encourage parents to attend
Objective 3: To determine if implementing suggestions made by parents will raise the attendance at family education nights in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years.

Activities to Achieve Goal:
· Cedar Creek Elementary will establish a parental involvement committee, which will be responsible for planning functions to involve families.
· Cedar Creek Elementary will continue to host family education nights throughout the 2010-2011 school year.
· After each educational family event, distribute surveys to the parents in the target classes (2 sections per grade level K-4, one English and one Bilingual). The surveys will focus on the reasons parents attended and also why there were not able to come. Questions will also be asked to get recommendations on how we can improve the recent family night and also things we can do to help them attend next time.
·As the year progresses, we will collect the surveys and compile the answers to find common themes. Recommendations for next year will be based off of these surveys.

Resources Needed
·The teacher of Cedar Creek Elementary-to lead the activities during the family nights
·The parents of Cedar Creek Elementary-to be the research groups
·The parental involvement committee-to facilitate the family nights and collect and analyze data
·The administration-to support the activities with faculty and resources
·Survey Monkey-to conduct the surveys sent out to parents

Person/s Responsible for Implementation of the Action Research Plan
·Genny Wessels-Researcher
·The parental involvement committee-to be determined in the Fall of 2010
·Kathy Cawthron and Kelly Doyle-administration of Cedar Creek Elementary

Timeline for Completion of Tasks
*Establish a parental involvement committee-September 2010
·Hosting family nights at Cedar Creek Elementary-2010/2011 school year
·Survey parents in selected classes-2010/2011 school year
·Compile data from surveys-2010/2011, to be completed in May 2011

Process of monitoring achievement of goals and objectives
·I, along with the parental involvement committee, will utilize the information gathered from each survey in order to increase participation. After implementing new methods, we will continue to survey the parents on what is working and ways to improve our family education nights.

Instrument to evaluate effectiveness of study
·To evaluate the effectiveness of the study, I will use surveys, as mentioned previously. Also having informal conversations with parents and teacher will provide information on how effective the study is going.

Week 2 revelations

During the course of this weeks activities and assignments, a lot has been revealed to me about the various areas in which action research can be done. All of which, focus on improving student achievement. I have enjoyed reading the discussion board and seeing my classmates proposals and ideas also. Like the professors mentioned in the Week 2 Overview, there are several common themes between us all. I am interested to see the findings of all the research projects.

Purpose and Significance for two research proposals

Purposes:
1. Per last week’s activities, I am very interested in parental involvement at my campus. The purpose of this research would be to find out reasons behind the lack of participation in family nights and ways to improve the turn outs. The goal of this research is to increase student achievement by involving the parents in their child’s education.
2. During this week’s reading, I have become very interested in teacher burn-out at various levels in their careers, and thus leading to a lack of motivation. The purpose of this research is to identify reasons teachers become burned out and ways to specifically increase motivation on my campus. The goal of this research is to also increase student achievement by motivating the teachers. I am most interested in this research proposal.

Significance:
1. The stakeholders benefitting from this action research are:
· The students: having their parents involved in their education will improve their achievement.
· The parents: focusing on the reasons behind why they are reluctant to participate and finding ways to “fix” these reasons, will allow them to attend school academic activities.
· The teachers: parental support at home will assist the teachers in the education of the students.
· The campus and district: increasing student achievement will raise the testing scores and increase AYP, for the school and district.
2. The stakeholders benefitting from this research are:
· The students: there is a direct correlation between teacher motivation and student motivation. Increasing the teacher’s will only increase the student’s and make learning more enjoyable for both.
· The teachers: in addition to the benefits listed for students, motivated teachers improve the morale of the campus.
· The campus and the district: when teachers and students are motivated, student achievement will rise.

Educators and the use of blogs

Educators can use blogs to share their research with others in their profession and get feedback on the research. Using a blog will allow the researcher to connect with other educators, outside their own community, and gain insight via other professionals. Dana says blogging allows the researcher to “play with, develop and challenge ideas that have developed about your administrative practice as a result of inquiry.” (Dana, 2009)

Action Research: What I Learned

Until this week, action research was a foreign concept to me. However, through the required readings, I have learned what action research is and the beginnings of how I can apply it to my professional development and life. Research, in the past, have been using references, such as the Internet, articles, journals, and/or books, to explore an idea or thought seen through the various people who conducted and wrote about their findings. Action research expands on the traditional model by looking at what others have found, applying it to the different circumstances in my professional life, and then, making new observations. There are several ways in which inquiry can be completed: university coursework, district meetings, leadership teams and professional learning communities. The major hindrance to performing action research is time. Administrator’s time is in high demand; however, it is imperative to allot the time each week to focus on inquiry. Action research has many benefits. For example, it forces principals out of isolation to work with their peers, sets a good role model for teachers and students as the Head Learner and helps “best practices flourish” (Dana, 2009) in schools. Finally, the main benefit of the action research process is improved student achievement. I look forward to participating in the action research process during this class, especially as it pertains to parental involvement.