Action
Research Project Title: Professional
Development: Improving the Experience
and Outcome
Blog URL: http://sheilamata.blogspot.com/
Number
of AR Project Documented Hours: 15 hours
AR
Project Summary (at least 250 words):
Like
I mentioned before, I was able to identify and review
literature that highlights key points of effective professional development. I met with my campus administrators and we
talked about our own perceptions of what constitutes effective professional
development. I emailed teachers
explaining the purpose behind my action research and specified how they could
provide their input. I’ve also surveyed
teacheras to assess their perceptions on our district’s current professional
development policies and effectiveness on student achievement. I was also able to form and meet with a focus
group to get a clear picture of what teachers want out of their professional
development and what they feel is lacking from several staff development
they’ve attended. Even though I’ve made all
this progress in my action research project, I fear that I may have to change
and start all over with a new topic. Because
of my busy schedule, I won’t be able to complete a big part of my action
research which was observing and visiting with teachers, previously treained by
me, on the implementation of specific curriculum. I don’t know if I can
still continue with my original plan without including that specific
component. One possibility that I see is
surveying teachers again on the effectiveness of our district’s Language Arts
Curriculum staff development that we attended this past summer, and using the
STAAR Reading results for this school year to assess the impact on student
achievement. My only problem is that I
won’t be able to see first hand how that curriculum is being implemented on a
daily basis in the classroom since I don’t have the luxury of time to visit
each classroom during my conference time.
Since I attended this workshop, I can also identify its strengths and weaknesses
and compare it to key points in my literature review, but I don’t know if this
will be enough to render accurate and valid results. Another option I had was to totally change my
topic. This school year we are
implementing PBIS, and one idea I had was to investigate the effectiveness of
this program and if we saw a bigger impact in student discipline and
achievement this year than our previous school year.