Action Research Planning

Before you start a cycle of action research it is good to have a plan of your objectives, what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve them.

Completing the form below should help you to formulate these. You can complete it in as much or as little detail as suits you, depending on how complex your research project is.

It is also wise to keep these plans to refer back to. They can also form a useful part of your teaching journal and help you to see your progress over time.

Your research plan should include the following information.

Research question:

Here you should try to formulate what it is you want to know. It will be helpful to formulate this as a question to yourself. Here are some possible examples.

• Are my instructions clear?

• Can I motivate my students to do more homework?

• Can I increase the amount of speaking my students do in class?

Actions I will take: Here you should describe the things you will do within your lesson that will be the subjects of your research. Here are some possible examples.

• I will write out and stage my instructions and try to check them each time I set up an activity.

• I will give my students a variety of different homework types and see which to try to see which ones they find most motivating.

• I will try giving my students more independence whilst speaking and try some more varied themes and types of interaction.

Time frame: You should set a time limit for your research. This will help you to ensure that some form of conclusion is reached. The time frame could be a single class, a week a semester or a complete school year.

Data collection: You should decide how you will collect data about your research. This could be from peer observation, questionnaires, video recordings etc. You could have a single form of data collection or use multiple forms.

Data analysis: You should think about how you will analyse the data and how it will help you to draw conclusions. This process should help you to decide whether you have chosen the correct form of data collection.

Conclusion: This part of the form should be completed at the end of the AR cycle and should include a statement of what you have learned from your research and what action or changes in your classroom practice you will make.

If you feel that your aims have been fully achieved, this maybe the end of your action research project, but if you still have questions or things that you are unsure about, you may want to make a note of them here and use this as the beginning of your next planning cycle.

Action Research Plan

Research question:

Actions I will take:

Time frame:

Data collection:

Data analysis:

Conclusion:

 

Written by Nik Peachey  - January 2008

 
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