I. CONTEXT AND RATIONALE
As the landscape of K-12 schools changes, expectations for teachers to engage in school reform and be accountable for student achievement increases. Though not all schools currently offer teachers opportunities for professional development through action research, some at least are realizing the professional and political implications of this type of sustained systematic inquiry. (Seider & Lemma 2017)
Research is about generating new understanding and solves the actual problems in given areas. Action research is one of the systematic methods of research in solving problems or making practice better. It aims at immediate application of theory and placed its emphasis on the solution of a problem in a local setting. The linking of the terms "action" and "research" highlights the essential features of this method: trying out ideas in practice as a means of increasing knowledge about or improving curriculum, teaching, and learning. Additionally, action research allows teachers the opportunities to identify changes they need to make in their teaching practices by providing them with the framework to build their own classroom projects. In many cases, when teachers design their own action research projects, they use a systematic approach to determine answers to instructional questions. This type of implemented professional development is powerful because, it is ongoing, interactive, and systemic.
Since the nature of the classroom changes when inquiry begins, conducting classroom-based research provides teachers with empowerment, allows them to promote their own practices, helps them understand and increases theoretical and practical knowledge about teaching and learning. It is inevitable that the value of a teacher’s work will improve when the teacher is involved in classroom-based research. One of the most important strengths of classroom inquiry is that it anchors change in observation and experiment.
So how does implementing classroom-based research bring about change in the classroom? This study will explore the difficulties and challenges brought about the preparation of action research and how teachers will bring change into their own classrooms by implementing their own action research plans.
In Nasugbu West Central School, teachers attended seminars related to professional growth and development, some are taking masteral units or even finished the masteral degree in different colleges and universities, that enhance their knowledge and skills about research works. When conducting an action research implemented by the Division of Batangas, the teachers were encouraged to attend seminar related to research works and do their own action research in a classroom basis, different opinions and statements were arise in the teachers, both positive and negative reaction. This led the researcher to conduct the research survey.
II. Innovation, Intervention and Strategy
The proposed strategy is a training development program related to action research, encompasses the methods and strategies and steps in conducting own action research.
III. Literature Review
A. Conceptual Literature
For over a decade, many educational researchers, scholars, policy makers, local governments and other important organizations have understood that there is a need for educational reform in education and in particular teacher education. These reports have highlighted the importance of the problems that our school systems, standards of education, and teaching and teacher education programs have faced.
Therefore, they have aroused the attention of educators, agencies, researchers, and schools. The main reason behind these reports is the “failure” of the nation’s schools and the need for improved teaching and teacher education. The release of these reports, especially teacher research has become prominent in teacher education, professional development, and school reform at the national, state, school district and school levels.
From this moment, teacher research has found a place in the programs of professional development and other strategies related to professionalizing teaching. What seemed to be missing were the voices of teachers and their professional roles in teaching. Because teacher research is a new genre and it is different from traditional research in terms of how it approaches the process of doing research in the classroom setting by teachers, it is a reform for teacher education.
Teacher research is not university-based research, it is school-based research focusing on the importance of teachers as knowledgeable experts about their own students and classrooms. Conducting classroom-based research increases or expands the view of the teacher’s role as decision makers, consultants, curriculum developers and classroom researchers, and it enables teachers to improve their understanding of the context of educational change.
The need for action research to improve the quality of teaching through teacher research has stemmed from an understanding that teachers are not just technicians playing the roles given to them; but that their main roles should be to become researchers in defining their own roles and to be ready to make changes and reflect on their own teaching practices.
The notion of action research goes as far back as the 1950s. With the notion of action research emerges another concept “teacher research.” In searching for the definition of action research we were made aware that these two terms or concepts are interrelated.
The term “action research” was first used by Collier (1945), Lewin (1948), and Lippitt (1949). According to Oja and Smulyan (1989), action research was initiated in the 1940s by Kurt Lewin, and modified by educators later. Many of the early action research initiative’s main concerns were to improve school and classroom practice and to contribute to knowledge about teaching and research itself.
According to Corey (1954) action research defined as “research undertaken by practitioners to improve their practices”. He claimed that when people attempt to solve their own practical problems by using the methods of science, they are able to provide enough evidence to define their problems more sharply. It would be clear that once teacher researchers start to define their own practical problems and identify action research hypotheses, this starting procedure of action research enables them to eliminate the practical difficulties of their day-by-day work. He emphasized on that the primary value of action research was improving the individual teacher’s effectiveness with subsequent classes in similar situations over time rather than extending generalizations across educational contexts.
It is similarly anchored with the statements of Dana and Yendol- Hoppey, (2008) an action research is a teacher-driven form of professional development in which teachers decide what will be studied. It differs from a more traditional approach in that teachers have often felt they were not allowed to admit to having problems or difficulties in the classroom. They stressed, “Rather than sweeping the problems under the carpet and pretending they don’t exist, teachers who conduct action research…welcome problems by deliberately naming them, making them public, examining them, and making a commitment to do something about them”.
This commitment develops into the action research plan of Glanz (1998) defines action research as “a form of research that is conducted by practitioners to improve practices in educational settings.
In contradicting the statement above, Reason and Bradbury (2001) argue that even so simple a statement as the previous one could stifle the development of the process by putting too strict a guideline on it, defining action research only as, “a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowledge in the pursuit worthwhile human purposes, grounded in a participatory worldview”. Because disagreement exists among qualitative researchers as to whether action research has a formalized research design protocol, the very nature of this disagreement would lead one to conclude that there is no singular, formalized action research design. Teachers can work in collaborative teams to answer a question that is of concern to all of them or work individually on a question that is only a concern to a single practitioner. The research question can be driven by concerns about curriculum, student behavior, parent participation, classroom management, or test results.
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