Review on Action Research Journal

Article 1

Title: Using Student Interviews to Guide Classroom Instruction: An Action Research Project
Author: Larry Buschman
Year: 2001Article 1

Article 2

Title: Using Action Research to Improve Teaching And Student Learning In College
Author: C. Dianne Raubenheimer and Jennifer L. Myka
Year: 2005

Article 3:

Title: Skills Training Versus Action Research In-Service: Impact on Student Attitudes to Self-Evaluation
Author: John A. Ross, Carol Rolheiser and Anne Hogaboam-Gray
Year: 1997

(A) COMPARISON (Similarity and Differences)

1. Sample
Article 1: Students
Article 2: Observers and students
Article 3: Students and teachers

The similarity between this three journal articles is these three authors are using students as the research sample. The differences are article 2 and 3 use teachers and observers as research sample

2. Setting
Article 1: Schools’ computer lab and resource room
Article 2: Classroom
Article 3: College zoology laboratory

The Settings of the research in these three journals are different. The setting of the research in article one is at private setting while setting in article two and three is public setting.

3. Procedure

The procedures that used to carry out the action research in these three journals are slightly the same. All the procedures in these three journal are basically based on the general steps in action research cycle where it involve plan, action and reflect. This three steps is repeating untill the authors find the actual research. The procedures of action research in these three journals are as followed:

Article 1

1. Identify problem
2. planning appropriate action to solve problem
3. carried out the action
4. observes the findings
5. Reflection

Article 2

1. Analyzing problem and raising effective research questions
2. Planning appropriate intervention to remedy the problem
3. Acting out the plan
4. Observing the outcomes
5. Evaluating the outcomes
6. Reflecting the outcomes

Article 3

1. Finding research questions
2. Planning appropriate method
3. Data collection
4. Analysis data
5. Discussion
6. Reflection

4. Data collection

Article 1: Students’ interviews, teacher self-assessment and observation
Article2: Interview, previous professors’ lab manual, Questionnaires, Observing(field notes) and Students’ exam paper.
Article 3: Attitude surveys, interview, authors’ own experience and other people experiences

The strategies and methods used in data collection for action research in these three journals do have some similarity and differences. The similarity of these three journals is the authors have used interview to collect data. The authors in these three articles are using specific problem and leading questions for the interview session. In addition, the authors in these three articles also have collected data via observing. Field notes have been used by the authors as an instrument to collect data where they write down their reflections and observation as notes after finished the class.

However, some of the techniques and instruments used in these three journals to carry out interview are different. In article one, author in article 1 have conducted two sets of interviews during different season of the school year, one is during the fall and the other one is during the spring and each session of the interview will be video typed as data. Whereas article 2 and 3 use dairy to jot down all the information from the interviewee as data during interview.

Different from articles 1 and 3, article 2 had used various types of techniques and instruments to collect research data. One of the methods is by using questionnaires. Questionnaires have been designed by him to survey the students’ perceptions. In article 2 students' exam paper had been used as a data to collect students' result to continue futher action.

As compare the data collection in article 3, author had used their own experiences and other people’s experiences as data for their research. They accessed those experiences through listening to or reading on their colleagues experiences. After that, they use dairy to jot down their daily experiences to use as a data for their research.

5. Data analysis

Article 1: Qualitative, quantitative
Article 2: Qualitative, quantitative
Article 3: Metaphors, quantitative


Similarity technique used data analysis in these three journals is the used of qualitative technique to summarized the results of their interviews into different categories. Analyzing data by using quantitative method such as using tables, graph and bar charts make the data well represent and easy to interpret.

Although these articles used the same method in data analysis, but the techniques used to analysis in each article are different. Author in article one used reflection question during interview to analysis their data. The method of data analysis is different from the other two journals. Using of reflection questions to analysis data assists them to revise existing questions.

Article 2 used different strategies to analysis their research data by grouping them into categories and order the categories based on the concepts which belong together. Beside, the author used statistic analysis method (spearman’s rank-order correlation) to find and rank the students’ preferable learning and enjoyable activities by constructing a statistical table.

In article 3, the authors construct metaphors where they make integration by sharing experiences with their peers to analyze their data. Besides, they use qualitative analysis where data have been coding and organized based on the interview guide questions, sort the interview into similar categories. After coding, they have also summarized the data for each main code categories by creating summary charts.

(B) Analysis

Article 1

This article is mainly discuss about the effectiveness of interview that can help teachers to guide their classroom instuction. Private setting used in article 1 help to prevent the other students to interrupt when teacher-researchers interview a student. Thus, this setting will help to increase the willingness of students to participate and share their own view with the teacher-researcher. This article is to find out thus effectiveness of students’ interview on classroom instruction, therefore the sample in this research focused on students. Most of the data in this article is collected by using combination of different techniques and mostly through interviewed individual students by using variety of open-ended questions. Open-ended questions were used to pose problems which will challenge the students and help authors to find additional information from the students. By using qualitative analysis, the content of data will be analyzed and then be summarized into table based on different categories. Teachers will continue to explore different effective questioning strategies and continue to reflect on changed in their beliefs on how students learnt to think mathematically. After that an analysis will be followed up after five years to assess how these changes affect classroom instruction.

Article 2

The setting in this article was at zoology laboratory in college where this article is to find out whether action research has the power to improve teaching and student learning in higher education. The data collections were done through four designed zoology lab session. Qualitative analysis had been used to analyze the data in this study, where content had been analyze by counting the number of time a particular verb in the previous professor laboratory manual. Verbs with the same meaning will then combine into one group. Statistical analysis such as spearman’s rank order correlation had been used to analyze the level enjoyment and preferred learning activities in lab among the students. After analysis, the result then plot into bar chart and table. Therefore, author gains better understandings from the bar chart rather than just summarize and jot down the relevant information from the research data.

Article 3

This article describe the differences between skills training and action research in-service based on the impact on student attitudes towards self-evaluation. Content analysis had been used to analyze the data where teachers’ characteristic in the experimental condition had been summarized into a table. Post and pretest evaluation attitude survey had been done in the study, where it consist of 10 Likert items to measure students’ beliefs about the usefulness of self-evaluation. The surveys enable the authors to gain better insight on their students’ thinking because the author can make the comparison between this two survey results. Score from the pretest surveys will then be used to select the subsample of students for focus group interview. Thus, help the author to get relevant feedback from the students. In this study, qualitative software program (ATLAS/ti) had been used to analyze data. By using this method, data can be well organized based on the interview guide questions and students’ expression were codes for four possible attributes of self-evaluation.

(C)Evaluation

Article 1

This article provides us useful information about the effectiveness of interview used and guidelines for planning and conducting student interview. This help me to gain better understanding on how to carry out action research by using interview as a method to collect data. Result in this article proved that conversation between teacher and students through interview can give students useful feedback while providing teachers valuable diagnostic information on students’ performance. Beside, the reliability and validity on this article is high since the research team members will continue to examine the student performance before and after the action research had been carried out. For instance, annual student interview will also continue to conduct with the entire student in school by the researcher to get further information. The weakness in this article is most of the things that discuss is based on the data collection method rather than data analysis. This article do not state down the procedure used by the researcher to analyze their data.

Article 2

This article is useful to provide information on people who are new in action research. It states clearly all the steps that had been used to carry out the study in three action research cycles. This three research cycles focus on how the research plan, act, observe and reflect in every cycle in the research. This helps us to understand and know the improvements that have been done in the study. The result in this study case show the action research has the potential to change teachers’ teaching strategies in higher education. The data about the effect of instructional change on student learning in this study are gathered systematically and well organized in table. This enables us to gain better understanding of the findings in this study.

Article 3

The result showed in this article show that student attitude toward self-evaluation decrease among students who start the skills training treatment with positive attitudes. Students received little assistance then they were working out details in their classroom. This cause the data survey that collect in this studies is no valid and reliable because some of the dishonest students may cheat when do self-evaluation survey. The weakness of this project is it performs a limited description of action research in which there was little formal training in research methods. This article also provides limited information about what their students were saying about self-evaluation practices. The other limitation of this study is that it failed to provide data on each step in connecting chain linking in-service to student achievement.

(D)Summary

Article 1

This journal introduces and describes the use of students’ interview to carry out action research to guide teachers’ classroom instruction in teaching problem-solving questions in Mathematics. This action research project is to investigate the effectiveness of students’ interviews to influence the teaching strategies of teacher to teach Mathematics in the classroom. This journal had discussed several advantages that teacher-researchers gained from interviews, how to plan and conduct students interview in classroom and the ways to carry out interviews effectively. Through interview, teacher researchers can gain better, accurate and complete view of students’ performance regarding on how students learn to think mathematically and why they make error and what kind of teaching methods that suitable to facilitate students’ thinking. The setting in this action research is private setting where teacher-researchers interview individual children in a computer lab and resource room while the rest of the class will participate in a program of extended activities. In my opinion, I feel that this method is useful to obtain accurate information from students. This is because the students have the opportunity to share their views with the teachers in this interview environment. Hence, students will feel more safety and privacy to voice out their actual problem in Mathematics. Therefore, this method helps to raise the validity and reliability of the results and findings from the interview.

Article 2

This journal is mainly about the how college used action research to improve the quality of instructions which can be used to enhance students learning. The research project provides a case study on how action research used to find out continuing classroom changes and also to evaluate the effect on college student learning. The research had been carrying out through implementation of four redesigned zoology laboratory sessions. The journal had report the finding based on three cycle of action research where each cycle include the step of planning, acting, observing, reflecting. The authors show that the process of action research will continue over successive generations and the process will never “stop”. The process will continue to for teachers to gain better insights on students’ preferable learning methods and new methods can be used to improve teachers’ teaching strategies. After finished one cycle of the action research, the authors will highlight the areas that needed to improve and reflect on the problems occur. This process helps the authors to generate new idea to carry out the next action research cycle. From the result and outcomes of this project, the authors had proved that action research has influences to change the teaching strategies used in higher education. After reading this journal, I realize that partnership between colleagues from different departments can help to facilitate integration across discipline. This is because by collaborative action research, the authors can share their outcomes among each other and willing to take risks as they learned together.

Article 3

This article focused on how action research different from skill training on the impact of students’ self-evaluation and attitudes. In this case study, action research had been found out in helping to design local improvement projects controlled by teachers and was supported by some of the outsiders. The finding from this research shown that action research has greater impact than skills development in-service on students self evaluations although there are less research training supports for teachers had been provided in this studies. The study in this article found that teachers need more time to adapt an innovation which involves sharing control of a core teacher function with their existing belief on teachers’ and students’ roles.

(E)Synthesis

Article 1

This article help to conduct a study to ensure that interviews are a more suitable assessment tool than traditional test papers used to examine students’ performance engaged in mathematical problem solving. This is because both teachers and students can gain benefits directly from interviews. Through interview, students share their problem with teachers and thus enable the teacher realized their incorrect teaching strategies used in teaching mathematics in classroom. As a result, students’ interviews do have change teachers’ ways to teach mathematics. Teacher should continue looking for practices to find their own solutions to solve the challenges which they face in their classroom. From the result in this study, problem and leading questions used for interviews are useful to gain additional relevant information from the students. Proper planning for the setting, sample, procedure, method use in data collection and analysis is important to increase the successfulness of the action research.

Article 2

The redesigned zoology lab sessions were implemented with students. During the lab session, a participant observer was involved to circling among the students and take part in the class process. Field notes were made for each session. By involving a participant observer in the classroom help the teacher to gain different perceptions from other people to obtain additional information. The teacher will discuss with the observer help to discuss and noted things that to change the next time they used particular instructional strategy in the next time the course offered to improve the teaching and learning process in the lab. Thus, the research finding will become more reliability and validity. This study in this article proved that the partnership between colleagues from different departments facilitate integration across disciplines. Besides, the authors’ partnership help to ensure the function of another pedagogies and educational research techniques in the content of the discipline


Article 3

This article found that when carried out this action research, teachers needed more time to work out how to accommodate with their original perceptions about students’ roles. This make them able to carried out their action in an effective way. Beside, students that involved in this study also needed to spend more time to gain better understanding on about what self-evaluation is, how it works to relate on their learning in class and also learn how to do it. This may help to increase the validity and reliability of the studies where the students will answer the survey form honestly because they understand that it is important to let teachers know about their actual problems in class. Thus, they become more involved in evaluation decision making and also diminish their negative feeling and belief about self-evaluation.