Classroom Displays in the Primary School
It has made me think about the value of reflections for the children themselves. Speaking and listening are skills that we as a school see as an area in need of improvement and these focus groups have shown an interesting way of approaching this. This an area for further exploration.
A 'plan - do - review' approach to display work with children involved at each stage may prove an interesting future cycle.
I will continue to add to and promote the Flickr group recording the cycles in my learning journal.
Myself as an action enquirer
I knew that criticality was an issue for me in that it is something I do not find possible unless I have a deep understanding of the material. I eventually identified that I have had a tendency to skim material partly because of time pressures. I have decided that I may need to still read quite widely in order to get the 'big picture' as this suits my global learning style. However I am going to try to focus in a few resources and try to 'unpick' the ideas in a deeper way. This evaluation is a tricky skill for me and one, I have come to realise, that is part of my difficulties with self-evaluation as well. It also has an impact on my evaluation of the data. This means that as my skill in this area improves I should see an improvement in my skills in interpreting and analysing data.
I found it hard to 'place' myself in the report. I noticed that I had even highlighted the importance of this for action researchers and then failed to do it myself. As I wrote the first section of the report I found myself adopting an 'academic' tone of the sort I had been encouraged to use in previously higher education settings. I realise now that I was wary of the subjective nature of a lot of action enquiry. This in part explains my reluctance to use the term 'action research' and to prefer the term action enquiry. For me the term 'research' is too intimately connected with the scientific method. It has connotations of an attempt at a more objective stance than I feel is applicable in this instance.
I have realised that close examination of a reflective journal can provide deep insights during the course of an action enquiry. It seems to me now that an action enquiry can be both first person and collaborative simultaneously and the two are not stages, as I initially thought, but rather compliment each other. This feels like a powerful insight. Although, I now realise it was there, in the literature I examined during the preparatory phase of the enquiry, it has come into focus for me during the writing of this report. This insight should enable me to give more depth to future action enquiries.
index
It has made me think about the value of reflections for the children themselves. Speaking and listening are skills that we as a school see as an area in need of improvement and these focus groups have shown an interesting way of approaching this. This an area for further exploration.
A 'plan - do - review' approach to display work with children involved at each stage may prove an interesting future cycle.
I will continue to add to and promote the Flickr group recording the cycles in my learning journal.
Myself as an action enquirer
I knew that criticality was an issue for me in that it is something I do not find possible unless I have a deep understanding of the material. I eventually identified that I have had a tendency to skim material partly because of time pressures. I have decided that I may need to still read quite widely in order to get the 'big picture' as this suits my global learning style. However I am going to try to focus in a few resources and try to 'unpick' the ideas in a deeper way. This evaluation is a tricky skill for me and one, I have come to realise, that is part of my difficulties with self-evaluation as well. It also has an impact on my evaluation of the data. This means that as my skill in this area improves I should see an improvement in my skills in interpreting and analysing data.
I found it hard to 'place' myself in the report. I noticed that I had even highlighted the importance of this for action researchers and then failed to do it myself. As I wrote the first section of the report I found myself adopting an 'academic' tone of the sort I had been encouraged to use in previously higher education settings. I realise now that I was wary of the subjective nature of a lot of action enquiry. This in part explains my reluctance to use the term 'action research' and to prefer the term action enquiry. For me the term 'research' is too intimately connected with the scientific method. It has connotations of an attempt at a more objective stance than I feel is applicable in this instance.
I have realised that close examination of a reflective journal can provide deep insights during the course of an action enquiry. It seems to me now that an action enquiry can be both first person and collaborative simultaneously and the two are not stages, as I initially thought, but rather compliment each other. This feels like a powerful insight. Although, I now realise it was there, in the literature I examined during the preparatory phase of the enquiry, it has come into focus for me during the writing of this report. This insight should enable me to give more depth to future action enquiries.
index