Limitations
Time
Conducting Action Research while full-time teaching and being a graduate student is a daunting undertaking. Throw in my position as immigrant and new father and it was an exhausting process and hard to collect meaningful data. I needed to plan my time better in order to conduct more meaningful, manageable, measurable research. I overcame this challenge by creating a realistic Phase 2, harmonized with the existing project, adopting a position which allowed me to fulfill all my duties.
External factors
Conducting Action Research in another teacher’s classroom was difficult. The project had already been decided, which meant it felt like I was shoehorning my research into the established project, instead of them being synchronized.
Although my master-teacher was very supportive, he did introduce factors that were beyond my control and impacted my research, such as introducing graded reflections. There is the possibility that this reduced the quality of student responses as they became overwhelmed by the sheer number of feedback forms. Fortunately, I had developed strong relationships with my students, both with and without my Action Research. I believe this is displayed by the rich student voice integral to my research, as students willingly
Quality and quantity of data
Developing the previous limitation, students sometimes gave thoughtless responses. As you’ve seen, many of my students are incredibly reflective providing meaningful data. However, there is the risk that the same student voices continue to be heard, drowning out those who are less willing or not as comfortable sharing their thoughts.
The students more willing to complete feedback forms and participate in discussions, are often those that have an established relationship with the teacher. Therefore, there is the possibility that these students are more likely to tell teachers “what they want to hear”. Hopefully, I overcame this by triangulating my data and not relying solely on student voice by incorporating my teacher journal and observation guides.
I discovered that researchers need to ask very clear questions, as one student misinterpreted the question, “Has a teacher ever written alongside you”:
Whenever a teacher writes things on the side I find it really helpful because then I can change what I did wrong.
The student thought I was referring to adding comments to their work, rather than writing with them, completing the same assignments. Often, I asked students to explain their responses, eliciting more meaningful, accurate responses.
Data quality is also affected by researcher bias and the risk that data is interpreted to fit in with the researcher’s desired results and preconceptions. My approach was to review as much literature as possible, in order to broaden my knowledge, seek feedback from peers and experts, and collect a variety of connected data that would tell its own story, closed to wild interpretation.
How useful my data is beyond my unique school environment should also be called into question. My school is very non-traditional, operating a unique project-based learning environment where student autonomy is constantly pursued. This allowed me to worry less about whether students would be capable of adopting leadership roles, as they have several opportunities in and outside classrooms, and such behavior and responsibility is constantly modeled and reinforced. However, my research is still transferable to other contexts as any teacher can write alongside students, and there is nothing to prevent students being given more responsibility. My proposed Phase 3 would have examined how best to coach students in leadership roles, giving them the tools to overcome challenges.
Conducting Action Research while full-time teaching and being a graduate student is a daunting undertaking. Throw in my position as immigrant and new father and it was an exhausting process and hard to collect meaningful data. I needed to plan my time better in order to conduct more meaningful, manageable, measurable research. I overcame this challenge by creating a realistic Phase 2, harmonized with the existing project, adopting a position which allowed me to fulfill all my duties.
External factors
Conducting Action Research in another teacher’s classroom was difficult. The project had already been decided, which meant it felt like I was shoehorning my research into the established project, instead of them being synchronized.
Although my master-teacher was very supportive, he did introduce factors that were beyond my control and impacted my research, such as introducing graded reflections. There is the possibility that this reduced the quality of student responses as they became overwhelmed by the sheer number of feedback forms. Fortunately, I had developed strong relationships with my students, both with and without my Action Research. I believe this is displayed by the rich student voice integral to my research, as students willingly
Quality and quantity of data
Developing the previous limitation, students sometimes gave thoughtless responses. As you’ve seen, many of my students are incredibly reflective providing meaningful data. However, there is the risk that the same student voices continue to be heard, drowning out those who are less willing or not as comfortable sharing their thoughts.
The students more willing to complete feedback forms and participate in discussions, are often those that have an established relationship with the teacher. Therefore, there is the possibility that these students are more likely to tell teachers “what they want to hear”. Hopefully, I overcame this by triangulating my data and not relying solely on student voice by incorporating my teacher journal and observation guides.
I discovered that researchers need to ask very clear questions, as one student misinterpreted the question, “Has a teacher ever written alongside you”:
Whenever a teacher writes things on the side I find it really helpful because then I can change what I did wrong.
The student thought I was referring to adding comments to their work, rather than writing with them, completing the same assignments. Often, I asked students to explain their responses, eliciting more meaningful, accurate responses.
Data quality is also affected by researcher bias and the risk that data is interpreted to fit in with the researcher’s desired results and preconceptions. My approach was to review as much literature as possible, in order to broaden my knowledge, seek feedback from peers and experts, and collect a variety of connected data that would tell its own story, closed to wild interpretation.
How useful my data is beyond my unique school environment should also be called into question. My school is very non-traditional, operating a unique project-based learning environment where student autonomy is constantly pursued. This allowed me to worry less about whether students would be capable of adopting leadership roles, as they have several opportunities in and outside classrooms, and such behavior and responsibility is constantly modeled and reinforced. However, my research is still transferable to other contexts as any teacher can write alongside students, and there is nothing to prevent students being given more responsibility. My proposed Phase 3 would have examined how best to coach students in leadership roles, giving them the tools to overcome challenges.