Action Research - What I've Learned

I haven't had a chance to do a lot of work with action research, but to this point, it looks like something that will be very valuable to me as an administrator in the future... and something that I would have liked to have seen in the past

In the traditional style of educational research, university professors consider current educational trends and create educational models that they believe will benefit today's administrators, teachers, and students. Unfortunately, this means that someone removed from the world of public K-12 education is creating a system by which K-12 employees are to work. These models may work in some situations, but certainly not all situations.

For example, a model may work well in a higher socio-economic area where students have both parents living at home, a parent that stays home during the day and is there when they leave and return from school, and works diligently with the childon their homework. The same model may not work as well in a lower socio-economic area where students are in single parent homes, where parents work two or three jobs and are rarely home with their child leaves or returns from school, and doesn't have time to work with their child on their homework.

I liken this to how a former employer operated. I worked as a DJ at a radio station in Minnesota for a few years while attending a nearby university. They received their playlists and music rotations (e.g., the listing of the songs their audience wanted to hear and the order they should be played in) from a company in Seattle. There was a disconnect between the audience members in Minnesota and the programmers in Seattle. For this reason, the station wasn't nearly as successful as it could have been. Had the station done its own research to determine what the listeners wanted to hear (perhaps supplemented by the information gathered by the Seattle firm), their "listenership" would have been much stronger, they could have charged more for their advertising, and they could have shared their newly found profit with their employees.

It is this way with action research, as well. If a university professor creates a model that is followed by administrators, teachers and students, there is a disconnect between the audience (teachers and students) and the programmer (the university professor). However, if the local administrator performs their own research, they are more apt to have a better understanding of the needs of their audience, and the gains can be shared with all audience members (students, teachers, administrators, district personnel, etc.).