Action Research 2013

As part of my job at my current school each teacher is required to complete what is known as 'action research'. My first two years at doing this research had mixed results. In 2011 I looked into the use of practical reports in my Science classes and how to make them more accessible for students and more useful for me. I worked with another staff member and we did well, although both being first year teachers it was a low priority. 2012 was a difficult year in a number of areas of my teaching. My action research topic was not precisely of my choosing and so I did not have much of an interest in the topic. Coupled with depression which took me out of many tasks during the key part of the project my end result was less than acceptable and honestly I feel I did not succeed.

This year however is different. I finally understand what I want to gain from participating in action research, rather than feeling like it is a chore that I must complete to get my pay (a horrible feeling in teaching). I also have a committed person to work with who is willing to have discussions that help push both of our ideas beyond those that may be comfortable or easy. Finally I have a topic I'm passionate about, so I want to put in the effort to make it work. The topic actually came first, then we decided to make it our action research project. I feel that having made the choice in this order I was far more engaged in the idea.

Our topic for 2013 is based around engaging students in Science. We reviewed our results from the previous year and in one semester 33 year 9 and 10 students received a failing grade, a far higher number than the students who fail due to lack of attendance. To me this spoke of a lack of engagement and possibly a lack of understanding of the requirements of the course. I feel the solutions to the second issue are more obvious and more transferable to other subjects, so I won't go into them now. The first however is a major concern.

I have grown up loving Science so to me finding students who have absolutely no interest in the subject was a bit of a blow (clearly I had some unrealistic expectations to overcome) while also fortunately creating a way for me to improve my teaching. My teaching originally was based on the way I was taught. Lecture, questions, test. While this model is fine for engaged students in some respects I have since found it is not useful for my classes, nor even fair for the majority of my students. So my challenge for this year is to create lessons that are engaging to the widest range of students possible while also meeting curriculum requirements. The statement I use to help me achieve this is 'There is so much to Science, it should never be boring'.

The tools we are using I'll discuss in later posts, this was intended to be a brief introduction and is already a bit too long.