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Glossary
Here is an alphabetical list of specialist terms you may not be familiar with. Some of them have a link to an in-depth explanation or a diagram.
Action research
"Action research consists of a family of research methodologies which pursue action and research outcomes at the same time." Bob Dick (2005)
Put simply, action research is a cyclical (sometimes described as spiral) process aimed at informed, planned, actions to bring improvement to a problematic situation. My study sets out not to prove or disprove a theory but rather to relate theory to practice and to use the techniques of systematic enquiry to gather data to inform planned actions. It uses mostly qualitative data, theory and reflections to inform the planning process. This diagram may help to clarify the action research process. If you are interested you can find out more about my use of action research in this study by following the link to my research methodology on the Links page.
Back to My Learning Journey
Blogs
Blogs are rather like diaries. Entries appear in date order and are easy to add to. Usually they are hosted on another web site so you don't need to be very technical to use one. Other people can leave you messages on your entries. This means that instead of just being able to look at a web page, people can tell you what they think about what you've written.
Back to My Learning Journey
Data Collection
The kind of data I collected in my action research is not like the data collected in science experiments. It is not all quantitative data (facts and figures) but mostly qualitative data (language based, finding out what people think or feel about something).
In the main body of my research I collected my data by asking people questions about what they thought of the Classroom Displays Blog.
Back to What I did
Edublogs
Edublogs is run by James Farmer. He is an academic in Australia and also runs a blog consultancy. He set up Edublogs so that teachers and other people who work in education can have a free blog with no adverts. Any education professional can sign up for a free blog and teachers can even get blogs for the children in their classes at Learnerblogs (see the Links Page).
Back to What I did
First Person Research`
This focuses on the use of the reflective journal, critical incidents, case studies, critical enquiry, narrative enquiry, the use of artefacts, to allow the practitioner to examine their own practice critically and systematically. The emphasis is on changing my practice not that of others.
"Notice that in all of these variations of teacher/action research, the gaze is ultimately on the researcher. It doesn't matter which 'methodology' we elect to use, in the end the account becomes a laying out of our personal understanding, our sense of the political realities which support or constrain our work with students." (Newman 2002)
back to what I needed to know
Folksonomy
This is a new way of building up categories or developing taxonomies that web 2.0 software enables. Sometimes called 'social' tagging it means that categories are built up on sites like Flickr by a sort of consensus amongst users.
Back to my learning journey
Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing site where people post photos and can form groups about topics they are interested in. You can also tag photographs to help people find things they might be interested in more easily. People can sign up for free accounts and store up to 200 photos.
Back to My Learning Journey
Grounded theory
I used a method for analysing qualitative data from grounded theory to analyse my much of my data. In grounded theory rather than deciding in advance what categories should be used the research lets the categories emerge from the data. This link will take you to a diagram of the process of analysing my data using grounded theory.
Back to What Hapened
Reflection
This is more that the kind of reflection you might do in the bath. It is an organised way of making yourself aware of how you think and feel about a 'critical incident' or an artefact. It's based on the work of various theorists and is one of the reasons for keeping a reflective learning journal. Reflection plays a part in action research both at the data collection stage (where reflections from the learning journal can be used) and at the review stage. Reflection is a valid method of data collection in action research but it needs to be balanced (triangulated) with other data. In my study I am using mainly the work of Gibbs and Shonn.
Follow this link to a diagram about reflection theory.
Back to My Learning Journey
RSS
A way of tracking new entries on blogs and wikis using a 'feed-reader' rather than visiting the web site. This makes it very easy to read lots of blogs quite quickly.
back to my learning journey
Social bookmarking
Similar to tagging. Members can quickly use sites like FURL to save links to web sites they like. These can then be accessed from any computer. Furl will then provide connections to other members 'furling' similar sites. Often much easier and more focussed to search than google. Members can add 'feeds' to their 'feed-readers' and so see what their contacts have been 'furling.' See links page for link to explanatory video.
back to my learning journey
TA Chat Forum
A chat forum is a web site where people can leave messages for each other and these gradually build into conversations. Some chat forums, like this one, are for people who all do the same job. It's a place where people can get help and advice from each other about all sorts of things to do with their work. It is possible that this could build into a 'Community of Practice'. This connects back to the theories of Wenger and Lave that I studied in year one of my degree and also to the work of one of my fellow researchers Andy Roberts who is researching distributed action research with online communities of practice. Explore my cycles there in detail by following this link to the TA research spiral
back to What happened
Tagging
Tags are used both on the blog and in Flickr.
Images in Flickr can have key words associated with them. These can then be used to search for related images.
Each post on the blog can be given a tag that places it in a category in the sidebar of the blog. Clicking on the category will bring up all the posts given that tag.
back to My learning journey
Web 2.0 or the 'read-write web'
The shift in the way the web towards conversation and 'user-created content'. Partly due to changes in software and the introduction of easy user editing of web sites to add either content, comment or meta-data (tags etc.)
"The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the entire online world."
(Shonfeld, Malik, and Copeland, 2006)
back to my learning journey
Wikis
Wikipedia being the most famous, wikis are web sites that can be easily edited without knowledge of web design programs or languages. Sometimes password protected, sometimes open to all to edit, wikis give a fast way of putting content on-line.
This web site has been created using a personal wiki on my computer which can then export files as html and be placed on-line.
back to my learning journey
Here is an alphabetical list of specialist terms you may not be familiar with. Some of them have a link to an in-depth explanation or a diagram.
Action research
"Action research consists of a family of research methodologies which pursue action and research outcomes at the same time." Bob Dick (2005)
Put simply, action research is a cyclical (sometimes described as spiral) process aimed at informed, planned, actions to bring improvement to a problematic situation. My study sets out not to prove or disprove a theory but rather to relate theory to practice and to use the techniques of systematic enquiry to gather data to inform planned actions. It uses mostly qualitative data, theory and reflections to inform the planning process. This diagram may help to clarify the action research process. If you are interested you can find out more about my use of action research in this study by following the link to my research methodology on the Links page.
Back to My Learning Journey
Blogs
Blogs are rather like diaries. Entries appear in date order and are easy to add to. Usually they are hosted on another web site so you don't need to be very technical to use one. Other people can leave you messages on your entries. This means that instead of just being able to look at a web page, people can tell you what they think about what you've written.
Back to My Learning Journey
Data Collection
The kind of data I collected in my action research is not like the data collected in science experiments. It is not all quantitative data (facts and figures) but mostly qualitative data (language based, finding out what people think or feel about something).
In the main body of my research I collected my data by asking people questions about what they thought of the Classroom Displays Blog.
Back to What I did
Edublogs
Edublogs is run by James Farmer. He is an academic in Australia and also runs a blog consultancy. He set up Edublogs so that teachers and other people who work in education can have a free blog with no adverts. Any education professional can sign up for a free blog and teachers can even get blogs for the children in their classes at Learnerblogs (see the Links Page).
Back to What I did
First Person Research`
This focuses on the use of the reflective journal, critical incidents, case studies, critical enquiry, narrative enquiry, the use of artefacts, to allow the practitioner to examine their own practice critically and systematically. The emphasis is on changing my practice not that of others.
"Notice that in all of these variations of teacher/action research, the gaze is ultimately on the researcher. It doesn't matter which 'methodology' we elect to use, in the end the account becomes a laying out of our personal understanding, our sense of the political realities which support or constrain our work with students." (Newman 2002)
back to what I needed to know
Folksonomy
This is a new way of building up categories or developing taxonomies that web 2.0 software enables. Sometimes called 'social' tagging it means that categories are built up on sites like Flickr by a sort of consensus amongst users.
Back to my learning journey
Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing site where people post photos and can form groups about topics they are interested in. You can also tag photographs to help people find things they might be interested in more easily. People can sign up for free accounts and store up to 200 photos.
Back to My Learning Journey
Grounded theory
I used a method for analysing qualitative data from grounded theory to analyse my much of my data. In grounded theory rather than deciding in advance what categories should be used the research lets the categories emerge from the data. This link will take you to a diagram of the process of analysing my data using grounded theory.
Back to What Hapened
Reflection
This is more that the kind of reflection you might do in the bath. It is an organised way of making yourself aware of how you think and feel about a 'critical incident' or an artefact. It's based on the work of various theorists and is one of the reasons for keeping a reflective learning journal. Reflection plays a part in action research both at the data collection stage (where reflections from the learning journal can be used) and at the review stage. Reflection is a valid method of data collection in action research but it needs to be balanced (triangulated) with other data. In my study I am using mainly the work of Gibbs and Shonn.
Follow this link to a diagram about reflection theory.
Back to My Learning Journey
RSS
A way of tracking new entries on blogs and wikis using a 'feed-reader' rather than visiting the web site. This makes it very easy to read lots of blogs quite quickly.
back to my learning journey
Social bookmarking
Similar to tagging. Members can quickly use sites like FURL to save links to web sites they like. These can then be accessed from any computer. Furl will then provide connections to other members 'furling' similar sites. Often much easier and more focussed to search than google. Members can add 'feeds' to their 'feed-readers' and so see what their contacts have been 'furling.' See links page for link to explanatory video.
back to my learning journey
TA Chat Forum
A chat forum is a web site where people can leave messages for each other and these gradually build into conversations. Some chat forums, like this one, are for people who all do the same job. It's a place where people can get help and advice from each other about all sorts of things to do with their work. It is possible that this could build into a 'Community of Practice'. This connects back to the theories of Wenger and Lave that I studied in year one of my degree and also to the work of one of my fellow researchers Andy Roberts who is researching distributed action research with online communities of practice. Explore my cycles there in detail by following this link to the TA research spiral
back to What happened
Tagging
Tags are used both on the blog and in Flickr.
Images in Flickr can have key words associated with them. These can then be used to search for related images.
Each post on the blog can be given a tag that places it in a category in the sidebar of the blog. Clicking on the category will bring up all the posts given that tag.
back to My learning journey
Web 2.0 or the 'read-write web'
The shift in the way the web towards conversation and 'user-created content'. Partly due to changes in software and the introduction of easy user editing of web sites to add either content, comment or meta-data (tags etc.)
"The Next Net is deeply collaborative: People from across the planet can work together on the same task, and products or tools can be rapidly tweaked and improved by the collective wisdom of the entire online world."
(Shonfeld, Malik, and Copeland, 2006)
back to my learning journey
Wikis
Wikipedia being the most famous, wikis are web sites that can be easily edited without knowledge of web design programs or languages. Sometimes password protected, sometimes open to all to edit, wikis give a fast way of putting content on-line.
This web site has been created using a personal wiki on my computer which can then export files as html and be placed on-line.
back to my learning journey
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