TITLE : TEACHERS INVESTIGATE THEIR WORK:AN INTRODUCTION TO THE METHODS OF ACTION RESEARCH
AUTHOR : HERBERT ALTRICHTER, PETER POSCH AND BRIDGET SOMEKH
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1993
PLACE PUBLISHED : LONDON
PUBLISHER : ROUTLEDGE
Concept of action research
In this book, the concept of action research is a research that carried out by teacher to solve the problems or issue and to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Besides, action research is also can be defined as a research that intended to provide supports for teachers, and a group of teachers in coping with the challenges and problems of practice by carrying out practices in a reflective way.
Reason why teacher need to carry out action reseach
broaden teachers’ knowledge and their professional competency
teachers can pass on their knowledge to colleagues, students, parents and also to wider public.
make important contribution to the knowledge base of their profession.
improve their teaching strategies.
do not only restrict their work and to work routinely but acted as professionals in generating new theories about their practice including its educational and social context.
help teachers to reflect on their practice
enable them to search for the best solutions and improvements to build on their strengths and to overcoming their weaknesses
enables the teachers to experiments with new ideas and strategies in teaching rather than accept blindly the problems they faced in the classroom from day to day.
help the educational system to build a more dynamic teaching and learning culture in schools.
The design of Action research
The model of Action research identify a problem or situation, plan, collect data, observe and reflection. The effects and side-effects of the new action strategies need to be monitored and do reflections on its from time to time to further improve the action strategies. When the new action strategies successfully to achieve the goals and objectives of the action research, teacher-researches will finish their projects by making professional knowledge to others. Setting that recommend in this book are most probabbly in schools and classrooms. Samples are students, headmasters, teacher researchers' colleagues and critical friends
Procedure in Action research
1. Finding starting point for the research
2. Clarifying the starting point
3. Data Collection
4. Data analysis
5. Developing action strategies and putting those strategies into practice
6. Making teacher's knowledge public
The first step in an action research process is to find a starting point, the example of case studies in this book shown that when searching for a starting point, teachers have to formulate more than one starting point and consider all the potential starting point in relation to everyday practice after a period of time and give sufficient time to make the exploration of possible starting points in the wide range as possible. Teachers can do an individual brainstorming by thinking of your own experience as a teacher. Besides, the researchers are advised to state several considerations to several starting points, this method enable teachers reflect on the day and think about any events that seems to be relevant to the issue recorded in it.
The way to avoid drawing false conclusions from the process of finding a starting point is to spend some time on clarifying the starting point. By the process of clarifying, researchers can get access to additional knowledge and use it for reflection. Hence, one possible way of testing our knowledge of a situation or problems that we want to do the research is to obtain additional information. This can be done by carrying out an observation or by interviewing other people involved. There are some questions that usually asked when clarifying the starting point for the research. The clarifications normally focus on formulating individual elements of the practical theory and also formulating the connections between elements of the practical theory. Formulating individuals’ elements of the practical theory enable the researchers to identify the most individual elements of the situation and to differentiate them from the less important elements. Questions such as what is happening in this situation? Which events, actions and features of the situations are important? And which people involved and in what kind of activities were always asked by the researchers. There are some concrete methods that can be used for clarifying the starting point of research. Analytic discourse in a group has proved to be an effective method of gaining in-depth understanding of the problem. Through this method, the interrelationship of the elements of the problem will become apparent. Besides, an analytic discourse can lead to a better understanding of the problem for the people reporting.
Other than that, conversation with a critical friend especially with a single person whom you trust and feel you can confide in can also be used to clarifying the starting point. It is useful to devote a period of time gaining an understanding of the situation and ask only questions that help to deepen this understanding and refrain from adverse criticisms or suggested solutions that might deflect the train of colleague’s reflective thinking. For example a small team of teacher-researchers will probably create better conditions for action research than a teacher working alone. This is because sharing happen via conversations and this may help to provide extra information for the problem to teacher-researchers.
Data collection: Techniques and intruments
Data collection is particularly useful in the time researchers want to gain better understanding and cope with difficult situations in which researchers are not satisfied with their routines. Data collection is also useful for re-examine their practical knowledge, develop it and make it accessible to public. Data typically provide action research researchers with access to a reality to be investigated. Researchers take them as representing of reality. Some methods can be used by teacher-researchers to collect data and materials for their reflections. Data are representation of events which can be passed on, store and made accessible to many people. They are regarded as relevant by a researcher providing evidence to the issue or problems investigated. Experiences can be used as a data for teacher-researchers to plan, carry out and evaluate their later actions in their action research. Experiences that can be used not only on researchers own experiences but also on other people’s experiences that can be accessed through listening to or reading their accounts. Teacher-researchers can use dairy to jot down their daily experiences to use as a data on their research. Type of data that used in doing the research is depended on the research questions. For example, if the research concerns on pupils’ use of language, then their written work or a type recording if their verbal will become an important data.
Teachers can also use the variety of existing material as data. This material can provide evidence of past events relevant to a research question. Written documents such as pupils’ written work and informal writing, teachers’ lesson plan and other documents (class register, letters from parents and school rules) and unwritten evidence are the most obvious existing data that teachers can easily collect. The way to collect and use these existing data is by making a dossier. A dossier is a set of materials that collecting based on certain criteria. Dossiers are useful because they can be used as reference material in the discussions with pupils, parents, or fellow teachers, as database for a class conference on ways of improving work pattern, as stimulus for pupils’ reflecting on their work and becoming more aware of educational aims and criteria for success in learning. Using existing data has some advantages over data collected through a contrived process. This is because it has higher credibility as it independent of teachers’ research activities and it often can be collected quickly to provide evidence of events. But it cannot be denied that existing data do have some advantages, where it contains too much unnecessary information, making its analysis very time-consuming.
On the other hand, teachers can do data collection through observing. Through observing, teachers entail continuously looking for answer to practical questions. Observation can be carried out by using systematic observation procedures to overcome some weakness that found in observations. Teachers have to observe something specific for a particular purpose, use observations to test assumptions against the reality and teachers should not just observe via seeing, but rather complement and correct it. The process of observing and documenting a situation can be carried out via direct observation, audio recording, photography and video-recording. Direct observations can be thought as a form of participant observation where teacher-researchers need to pay full attention or emotional involvement during pupils’ group work or when pupils are reporting back to the class. The most important skill in observing is teachers have to be sensitivity to what is observed and quickly jot down the observations as documents data. When using direct observations as a method of data collection, firstly, teacher-researchers have to preparing to observe by writing down the focus of their observations. Then, they have to record the observations; this can be made either during or after the observation. Teacher-researchers record their observations by using topic cards. When recording observations, teacher-researchers need to write down some issue that they want to collect data in ten separate cards. At the end of the school day, they have to deal two or three cards and reflect on what has happened during the day in relation to these issues. Then write observation notes for each in the research dairy. This will raise the level of readiness and sensitivity in observing and the connections will emerge between observations. Therefore, some issues which prove unproductive can be ignored and new ones can be included (Hook 1981:132).
Observation requires certain strangers’ view (Rumpf 1986), therefore teacher-researcher can use other people as observers to provide a new perspective on the classroom. This is because different people have different perspectives, they are able to observe more precisely and have time to access information that is not easily accessible to the teacher-researchers for the lesson. As to use other people as observers, there are useful to choose an observer whom you can trust, ask them to describe detail based on their observations or ask them to give their written notes after do the observation and take time to read on them to gain extra information. The sample of this method used in this book is shadow study where an observer work alongside a teacher, the observation is focus on one individual or a small group of pupils and carried out for a long period of time. While carry out the shadow study, the observers should be as close as possible to those being observed without being involved in pupils’ work.
Tape recorder can be used also as a method to observe, tape-recording used to capture the sounds of a situation. But this method will lose some information as compared with direct observation. Tape-recording is useful to collect data which relate to non-verbal communication such as movements, facial expressions and gestures. There are two important ways of using tape-recordings, teacher-researchers can record complete teaching sessions which will help to give an overview in identifying possible research questions or record interactions which are narrowly limited in time and select carefully on a chosen research question. Technical suggestion for tape-recording is to use of small tape-recorder with batteries and normal size cassettes. This make up very little room and the cassettes are easily available. The recorder can be slipped into a pocket and the microphone can be clipped on to a shirt front at the height best suited to pick up the pupils’ voices. Tape-recorder with high quality of microphone are recommended to use for whole class recordings and suspended from the ceiling by attaching it to light fitting. Before using the tape recorder, always check it is working and label the tape immediately. The way to make good use of tape-recording is to transcribe selected passage by following the steps below: firstly, listen to the whole recording to get an overview, then listen a second time and make brief notes of the structure. Finally, on the basis of these notes, select the important and relevant sections to the research question and transcribe these fully. Teacher-researchers are always needed to bear in mind to use abbreviations and annotations when doing transcribing. This help to save time and space when transcribing. The important is to have a system that can be used quickly and consistent, so the researchers know exactly what abbreviations mean when they come to read the transcript.
An image tells more than a thousand words, photo can be useful for teacher-researchers to collect data for their research. Photo can use as supplement for observations notes or tape-recordings of a situation. This is because it brings back an impression of what and where the research took place. Photos are served as an aid non-verbal aspect of situations and events and help to raise questions and stimulate ideas on finding a starting point for research. This can be explained when younger pupils especially may be stimulated to talk by the concrete character of pictures. For example, by showing a photo, the researchers can ask the pupils about what they’re doing when this photograph was taken. To avoid the disruptive that happen when taking photographs in a classroom, it is better to ask other people to give a help. After taking the photograph, data summary including a brief descriptions and comments on the situations in which the photograph was taken should be made soon and photograph should be labeled immediately. Besides, video-recording is one of the methods used to collect data for research, it combine the advantages of tape-recording and direct observation to provide a record of movement. Video-recording help to make the context and causal relationship more accessible than other methods of data-collection. Especially when doing the research on pupils’ behaviour patterns, video-recording can made the behaviour pattern become visible, including the relationship between verbal and non-verbal behaviour and video tapes are also an excellent way to present situations to others to open up discussion among them. On the contrary, video-recordings are very time consuming and is complicated to use as involve a lots of equipments which can be very distracting in a classroom. This is because pictures and sound together contain a lot of information and this makes the researchers spend time sifting and select information that is relevant for the research. As to overcome this problem, it is recommended to use the camera in a static position and use it frequently to become routine.
Interviewing is another method used in data collection. Commonly, interviews have developed from everyday conversation. By interviewing, researchers can give access to other people’s perceptions, including crucially the thoughts, attitudes and opinions which lie behind their behaviour. By questioning, orally or in writing when interview the pupils, teacher-researchers gain more information on the pupil, this is because the behaviour or issue that teacher think as disruptive in a pupil may mean something different to the pupil herself. However, interview only brings to what the interviewee thinks and only his or her interpretations at the time and under the circumstances of an interview. Sometimes, the interviewee may misinform the interviewer by withholding information. It is important to set up the right preconditions for an interview, this is because interviews as a relationship between people. Therefore, the key precondition for the success of an interview is to make it clear to the interviewee that what he or she has to say. Before to do the interviewing, teacher-researchers have to prepare for an interview, they have to reflect carefully on what they intent to know from the interviewee and the reason why they want to interview them. This will help the researchers to decide upon the issue that will be the focus on the interview. As a result, teacher-researchers are recommended to formulate questions either that are central to the research question or the question that will enable them to reflect more deeply on sensitive issues. Unstructured interviews unlike structure interview where they give interviewees room to develop and generate their own concern in answering the questions.
Focus and narrative is two kinds of open interview (Haron 1982:119). The focused interviews are much more useful for teacher-researchers. This type of interviews asks for perceptions and interpretations of specific events such as the things that occur during a lesson. While the narrative interviews are simply put forward a broad topic. The choice of place and time for the interview also depend on the research question. After prepare for an interview, it is the time to carry out an interview. Firstly, the teacher-researchers have to explain the purpose of the interview to the interviewee at the start and to enlist the interviewees’ help. The time taken does not take long and is recommended for several reasons such as ethical reason where researchers have always bear in mind that it is not ethical to use information from the interview without the knowledge of the interviewee and reasons relating to quality of the information where an interviewee who knows what is it all about is more likely to be able to give the information that interviewer needs. When interview pupils, it is essential for pupils to be clear that the interview situation is different from other question-and-answer sessions with the teacher. This is because when the pupils think that the interview as one kind of exam, they may probably tell only what they believe teacher wants to hear without telling the truth.
During an interview, listening is as important as questioning. When listen to the interviewee’s opinions, there are some ways to follow such as not interrupting the train of thought, accepting pause and accept whatever is said however unexpected and regardless of the interviewer’s own views. When asking question in interview, the questions should make clear what the interviewer wants to know and helping the interviewee to explore his or her mental space. It is important to ask open questions especially at the beginning of an interview. This is because they allow the interviewee to shape the answer and take responsibility for structuring the information. After interviewing, interviewer should repeat what the interviewee said in your own words to understanding what he or she wanted to communicate. When interview, teacher-researchers will need to ask the interviewee to give example as illustration and also for interpretations of causes, reasons or aims. After interviewing, the most important task is to prepare the data for further analysis. Action researchers need to write brief notes of their experience in the interview and things that was striking about what they have found out. It can be also helpful to play the interview to a colleague and ask them to give some comments. This help to probably find out the things that the researchers failed to notice from the interview.
Questionnaire can be a useful method of data collections for teacher-researchers. It is easy to develop and administer without any problems. But the usefulness of a questionnaire depends principally on the quality of the questions. Before developing the questionnaire as a method for data collections, the researchers have to spend on thinking through the problem that they want to investigate. The teacher-researchers have to consider in detail on why they are asking these questions, what the answer they expect to get and what they are going to use them for. This is because the more precisely they know their intentions, the better the structure of the questionnaire or vice versa. A questionnaire can consist of both open and closed questions. The content of the questionnaire have to focus on the problems that relevance to the research and always make sure that the respondents have the information they need to answer the questions. Besides, researchers have to avoid the way to construct the questions which will restrict the range of possible answer. The wordings of questions have also need to be simple and understandable, and emotionally loaded words have to avoid because it might have negative consequences for the validity of the answer. Questionnaires are not always taken seriously by everyone especially if the topic is not important to the respondent. Therefore, one important way to reduce these advantages is to win over the respondents to the aims of the research. For example, let the pupils know and understand the reason for the research and are interested in its outcomes, this help to increase the reliability of the data that collected from questionnaire.
A combined method-triangulation is a very useful method that used in data collection. This method combines different methods of data collection and typically consists of observation and interview. Those data on a particular situation are collected from three perspectives such as the teachers’ perspectives (by an interview), the perspective of individual pupils (by interviews) and from the perspective of a neutral third party (by observation). An example of triangulation was shown in this book; the teacher in change of information Technology, Vince Moon who wanted to test and evaluate the use of computers had used the triangulation method to collect data. The teacher and a critical friend planned the day together to decide the aims of the activity and listing out the concrete issue and questions as the focus for data collection. On that day, the critical friend was an observer who helped to observe the activities, taking notes and photographs. After a short time, the critical friend interviewed three pairs of students who were chosen by the teacher and using photographs to start the discussion that related with the issues and questions. After the lesson, the teacher used the issues and questions as a guideline to write detailed notes about his perceptions of the day. By this way, the teacher arrived at three sets of data included the view of six students, the teacher’s perception and the observer’s notes. This enables the teacher to make comparison on these three different points of view to focus of the analysis.
Data Analysis: Techniques and instruments
After collecting the data for research, teacher researchers in action research need to analyze the data to gain clearer and better understanding of the data of a problem or situation. This help to make the data become more reliable and useful as the basis for planning future action to improve the situation. Through analysis, data are reconstructed and be more available to critical questioning. This helps teacher researchers to correct their false interpretations for a situation or problem. The analysis of data helps teacher researchers generate and elaborate new practical theory which can extend existing understanding. Therefore, data analysis is important in the action research cycle because it require using in further testing through reflection in practice. There are six important processes in data analysis; Reading data, selecting data, presenting data, interpreting and drawing conclusions, further research activities and collecting data. All those analysis process are known as constructive stage of analysis. Reading data is the first stage in analysis process where data are read to recall the events and experiences that teacher researchers presented. Selecting data is the second stage where researchers separate the data from unimportant; grouping similar data; sorting and simplified the complex data details. After that, the selected data are presented in an easy form to enable researchers to focus. In the stage of interpreting data and drawing conclusions, researchers have to explain the relationships of the data and also construct the practical theory to make it fit the situation which has been researched. All the theory or model should relate to the research focus.
The objectives of data analysis is to make sense of the data where researches have to always bear in mind to make sure the data bring event to mind and focused on the central issues. As a result, it is helpful to review data immediately when doing data analysis and researchers have to summaries the data which had been collected. These enable researchers to access the data easily and to get an overview of what they offer concerning the research question. This is important to remember that a data summary should not more than two pages.
Besides, another way to analysis data is by developing categories and coding them. Categories need to be chosen which are relevant to the research questions and also express the content of the data; it is important to choose suitable category to each passage of a text where this process known as coding data. Deductive and inductive are two methods used in coding data. According to deductive method, categories are chosen from researcher’s theoretical knowledge and data is searched for relevant passage. Whereby, inductive method is carried out where categories are chosen during and after scrutinizing the data and categories are chose from the data. To carry out this method, researchers had to read through the text notes (transcript of the interview) that they want to code and highlight the important passages that relevant to their research questions. This help to provide broad view of the contents of the data via the passages which had been highlighted. Researchers have to read the highlighted passages for second time and decide a category for passage which expressed its content. Then, researchers had to list all the categories in a blank paper and also write down the related passage on each category. Researches had to order the categories by grouping concepts which belong together. Finally, the researchers have to write the definitions of the categories to express their theoretical understanding of the categories and also provide independent meaning for the data. This step is important because definitions are useful for the researchers to continue elaborate and refine them in the course of their work.
On the other hand, to analyse researchers had to keep logs and journals, periodically read over the evidence, code data from themes and patterns, draw or chart patterns, try to summarize what they have learned as they do the research by noting images, metaphors, and any new questions. Besides, in carrying data analysis, researchers also need to check out their understandings by triangulating evidence (same theme, code, pattern appears in more than two types of data), and by talking to peers, students, friends. This can help researchers to gain extra information which will help to analyse the data more clearly. There is also some of the complex method that used in data analysis. Pattern analysis is one of the complex methods that use in data analysis where patterns are regularities of actions where these actions will happen over and over again. Patterns analysis is a method where researchers only select the data which connected by pattern from the whole data. In doing this, certain data are emphasized and the other irrelevant to the pattern are left behind.
For instance, another complex method used in data analysis is dilemma analysis (Richard Winter, 1982). This is a method which can be used in any data, but is particularly useful with interview transcripts. Dilemma analysis is focus on the concept where teachers are continually faced with dilemmas that require professional decision-making. In every case, these dilemma usually be expressed by using these several terms such as on the other hand and but. To carry out dilemma analysis, the first stage is to finding dilemmas. In carrying dilemma analysis, researchers need to select data, structured and interpreted so that the contradictions that occur come to light rather than harmony. After finding dilemma, the second stage is to formulate and explore dilemmas. Researchers can formulate dilemmas via linguistic structure ‘on the other hand-on the other hand’. Stage three in dilemma analysis is to work on dilemmas; researchers have to work on and try to find ways to solve them even a dilemma is judge to be “unsolvable”.
Research Ethics
When carrying out action research, it is important for teacher researchers to ensure that their activities follow ethical quality criteria. As to ensure that the research activities do not against research ethics, the research should be following the following criteria:
Research should be well-matched with the educational aims of the situation being researched. For example, data collection based on competitive test should be avoided because it against the education aims of fostering co-operation between students.
When using research methods, teacher researchers have to negotiate with the participants before they start to do the data collection. For example, in classroom research teacher researchers have to keep informing and asking the students for their co-operation at every stage. This process is repeated from time to time, if the students reject those methods of data collection, alternative procedures have to be negotiated between teacher researchers and the students.
All data which had been collected are confidential; this is because data are the property of those who originate. As a result, data cannot be passed on to others without permissions. For instance, research reports are also must not be published without giving the opportunity for the participants to comment.
Ethical code has to be set out if teacher researchers collaborate with external facilitators. The ethical code help to define the right and duties of all parties and safeguard the interest of all those involved.
Besides, to ensure that the action research is ethics, the research design and individuals methods should be compatible with the economies of time which require by the teacher’s main responsibility for teaching. Furthermore, research methods that have been used also have to compatible with the professional culture of teachers.
Validity and reliability of action research
The validity and reliability of action research increase when researchers making close comparisons by repeating the research. For example, after collecting data, researchers have to ask for different people view at the same event, using different research methods rather than just using one method for doing the research.
During analytic process, new understandings emerge. Therefore, the way to ensure the findings in data analysis are trustworthy is by carrying out critical analysis. Critical analysis includes checking the reliability of any evidence which make the finding sustainable and searching for evidence to against it. These two activities are vital to test for the reliability and validity of findings. Researchers had to remain open to data which question their theories rather than accept them and always do further reflection on it. Furthermore, when doing data analysis, researchers had to always step back from their assumptions, look at their data and be open to any facts that encountered their assumptions.
Testing the reliability of the results and findings is an endless process and where it can be no absolute reliability. Even so, the research had also need to end somewhere. There is no actual time for the research to end but the research is considered to end when it meets the saturation situation. This situation happens when the research comes out any extra collecting data that yield nothing new in either positive or negatives sense. The validity of the data in action research can be checking by using communicative validation method. This method can be done through setting up a consensus view between an interviewee and interviewer. This method used by teachers when they told students their interpretation of what has been said in the lesson. If the students agree, this agreement is considered as a sign of the validity of teachers’ interpretation. The amount of agreements indicates the validity of the results of the analysis. Nevertheless, the validity in all cases through this method is weak and short term. The disagreement in interpretation will challenges the researchers to face differences of opinion.
Comment on this book
After finish reading this book, I found that this book is very useful for those who are new in educational field. This book had introduced the concept of action research, ways to undergo action research, methods and strategies used in action research. Besides, I can found a variety of practical suggestions that have been developed by action researchers for investigating and introducing innovation into classrooms and schools. Although this book does not contain full case studies that had written by teachers, but it still contain some useful information that enable me to gain better understanding of action research. Furthermore, this book is also primarily written for teachers who want to engage in classroom innovation and school development. This book is highly recommended because it is an essential guide for those who newly engage in action research and interested in investigating their own practice in order to improve it.
