EDLD+5301+Course+Reflections



   EDLD 5301, Educational Research, is my tenth course in this program. Throughout this course, I have had multiple opportunities as an educational practitioner to stop and think about why I teach using the methods that I use and what would improve those methods. This course outlines a practical, comprehensive way for leaders to improve our schools. “Leaders should focus on the work to improve schools on a continual basis of discovery. (Harris, et al, 2010) This course has demonstrated ways to “focus on the work” and make school ased on the research.  Although I have taken part in several research studies in my twenty years of experience as a teacher, I had never had any formal training about the actual steps of action research. Our text for this course, // Leading with Passions and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher //by Nancy Dana describes the steps to doing action research correctly. I was interested to learn that truly meaningful research comes from ‘wonderings’ that leaders have about occurrences in their everyday lives. By cultivating these wonderings and adopting “this inquiry stance toward practice, principals and teachers play a critical role in enhancing their own professional growth and ultimately the experience of schooling for children.” (Dana, 2009) Above all, I want to increase the quality of education that my students receive. Dana clearly described the steps involved and I was able to follow them to create my own action research plan outline from wonderings based on my current experiences as a Response to Intervention committee member at my elementary campus.  In drafting my plan, I found the other text for this course, // Examining What We Do to Improve Our Schools: 8 Steps from Analysis to Action //by Harris, Edmonson and Combs to be wonderful resource. This book outlined a clear, precise method for conducting research and even included planning templates that I could use to organize my thoughts in a concise manner. The authors describe the process for school improvement as a cyclical process that “begins again with step one because examining school improvement is a continual process.” (Harris, et, 2010.) I learned from this course that the best research leads to changes in practice and will lead to other inquiries in the future.  Another aspect of this course that I enjoyed was the feedback from my peers, as well as my administrators on my action plan draft. All were complimentary, but gave realistic suggestions that I incorporated into my revised plan. I am going to include the addition of Nominal Grouping to my plan as a result of a peer suggestion from the discussion board. My site mentor also suggested the timeline be more realistic in allowing time for feedback and glitches in the testing process. I might have had some unrealistic expectations, so I adjusted my plan according to his suggestions.  Over all, I feel that I have gained a lot of new knowledge from this course about the need for data-driven, strategic research that is based on a campus need or administrative ‘wondering.” I now understand the steps and time involved in this process and look forward to implementing them in the next school year and sharing my results with my administrators and the public through my blog.  Sources: Dana, N.F. (2009). //Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher //. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Harris, S., Edmonson, S., & Combs, J. (2010). //Examining what we do to improve our schools: 8 steps from analysis to action //. Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education, Inc.