Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher (4th Edition)

Action Research: A Guide for the Teacher Researcher (4th Edition) Review

Born of the author's own experience working with teachers and principals, Action Research, Fourth Edition, provides a research-based step-by-step outline of how to do action research. The author guides teachers and administrators through the action research process via numerous concrete illustrations; positioning it as a fundamental component of teaching.

 

Action Research helps to develop teachers and administrators with professional attitudes, who embrace action, progress, and reform.

 

Features

 

Balanced coverage of quantitative data collection and analysis techniques

• Chapter 4, Data Collection Techniques, covers collection techniques for the most frequently used qualitative and quantitative data, including observations, interviews, teacher-made tests, and standardized test data.
• Chapter 6, Data Analysis and Interpretation, guides students through data analysis and provides techniques, coding guidelines, and examples for analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data.
• Additional coverage of mixed methods research has been added throughout the book.

 

A focus on producing critical consumers of action research

• A new chapter, Evaluating Action Research (Chapter 9), helps students become critical consumers of research. 
• Included in Chapter 9 is an article from an action research journal that is analyzed using the new criteria for evaluating action research.
• Appendix A, Action Research in Action, contains an extended example and evaluation of an action research case study.

 

An expanded coverage of ethics

• Chapter 2, Ethics, provides an expanded discussion of ethical guidelines and provides guidance for seeking and obtaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval.

 

Integration to the MyEducationLab for Action Research website

• The fourth edition of Action Research includes margin note integration with MyEducationLab for Action Research, a dynamic online learning environment that provides students with the opportunity to build a better understanding of action research through engagement with real products from the research process. 

 

 

A user-friendly format

• Chapter objectives give students targets to shoot for as they read and study
• Key Concept boxes provide students with an efficient review of important vocabulary and theory
• Research in Action checklists provide students with guidelines to use in each stage of the action research process

The Action Research Guidebook: A Four-Stage Process for Educators and School Teams

The Action Research Guidebook: A Four-Stage Process for Educators and School Teams Review

Best-selling author Richard Sagor’s updated edition provides steps for effectively implementing research and data. The book is organized around Sagor’s four-stage process and includes hands-on tools.

Action Research

Action Research Review

Community-based action research seeks to involve as active participants those who have traditionally been called subjects and is intended to result in a practical outcome related to the lives or work of the participants. No matter the setting-organizational, institutional, or educational-there are particular skills needed to conduct action research successfully. In Action Research, author Ernest T. Stringer provides a series of tools that assist the researcher in working through the research process. The Third Edition of this popular text provides a simple but highly effective model for approaching action research: * Look: Building a picture and gathering information * Think: Interpreting and explaining * Act: Resolving issues and problems.

What Works in Schools: Translating Research Into Action

What Works in Schools: Translating Research Into Action Review

What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action

Any school in the United States can operate at advanced levels of effectiveness-if it is willing to implement what is known about effective schooling. "If we follow the guidance offered from 35 years of research," says author Robert J. Marzano, "we can enter an era of unprecedented effectiveness for the public practice of education." In What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action, Marzano synthesizes that research to provide clear and unequalled insight into the nature of schooling.

Marzano defines the factors affecting student achievement and offers compelling answers to once-elusive questions:

* How can schools set academic goals that do not underestimate student potential? * How critical are staff collegiality and professional development? * Do all students have equal opportunity to learn given current curriculum requirements? * Supplemental versus required content-is there room for redefinition? * What types of parental and community involvement make a real difference? * What instructional strategies really work? * What influence can an individual teacher have on students? * How can teachers manage classrooms that promote positive student-and-teacher relationships? * How can teachers structure their curricula to better sequence and pace content? * Can teachers really overcome a student's negative home environment? * How does an understanding of motivation theories help students and teachers overcome learning obstacles? * What specific learning strategies can enhance learned intelligence and background knowledge?

In each chapter, Marzano recommends specific-and attainable-action steps to implement successful strategies culled from the wealth of research data.

Schools can and do affect student achievement. In his latest work, Marzano leads the way in establishing positive approaches that can make the long-held dream of effective public education a reality.

Improving Schools Through Action Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Educators (2nd Edition)

Improving Schools Through Action Research: A Comprehensive Guide for Educators (2nd Edition) Review

This text emphasizes the reflective processes used in planning and conducting action research studies, data analysis techniques (quantitative and qualitative), and displaying and explaining results. It provides specific information needed to complete each step of the action research cycle with chapter activities that help the student/reader conduct projects focused on school improvement. Each activity includes a research paper component that helps students create a research paper as they complete the activities.

The DASH Diet Action Plan: Based on the National Institutes of Health Research: Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension

The DASH Diet Action Plan: Based on the National Institutes of Health Research: Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Review

This is the user-friendly guide to the DASH diet. Proven to lower blood pressure and cholesterol without medication, it was developed in research sponsored by US National Institutes of Health, entitled, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH). Each new research study continues to prove the benefits of the DASH Diet. The DASH diet is recommended by the U.S. treatment guidelines for hypertension. The 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans advocate this eating plan for everyone. And the DASH diet forms the basis for the USDA MyPyramid. It is an eating plan that is rich in fruits, vegetables, low fat or nonfat dairy, is low in sodium, and includes lean meats, fish and poultry, grains, nuts and beans. The DASH diet helps lower cholesterol and supports healthy weight loss. It is flexible enough to meet the lifestyle and food preferences of most people.

However, many people have found it difficult to follow the DASH diet. This is the user-friendly book, designed to make it easy to DASH. It was written by a dietitian who is experienced in helping people make sustainable changes in how they eat. Learn how to follow the DASH diet in your real life. Accommodate DASH even when eating on-the-run. Add more vegetables into your diet, even if you think you hate vegetables. Learn how to manage salt intake. Makeover your kitchen to simplify following DASH. Lose weight with the DASH diet. The book has 28 days of meal plans (with adjustments for 1200, 1600, and 2000 calorie plans), and DASH-friendly recipes.

And this is the complete healthy lifestyle plan for hypertension. It includes the healthy weight loss and exercise that will lower blood pressure. Make your own personal DASH Diet Action Plan, with the specific steps to fit the DASH diet into your daily routine. Reach your goal to lower blood pressure or just having a healthier lifestyle. Purchasing this book is your first step in improving your health for the long run.

Integrating Teaching, Learning, and Action Research: Enhancing Instruction in the K-12 Classroom

Integrating Teaching, Learning, and Action Research: Enhancing Instruction in the K-12 Classroom Review

Helping teachers engage K–12 students as participatory researchers to accomplish highly effective learning outcomes

Integrating Teaching, Learning, and Action Research: Enhancing Instruction in the K–12 Classroom demonstrates how teachers can use action research as an integral component of teaching and learning. The text uses examples and lesson plans to demonstrate how student research processes can be incorporated into classroom lessons that are linked to standards.

Key Features

• Guides teachers through systematic steps of planning, instruction, assessment, and evaluation, taking into account the diverse abilities and characteristics of their students, the complex body of knowledge and skills they must acquire, and the wide array of learning activities that can be engaged in the process
• Demonstrates how teacher action research and student action learning-working in tandem-create a dynamic, engaging learning community that enables students to achieve desired learning outcomes
• Provides clear directions and examples of how to apply action research to core classroom activities: lesson planning, instructional processes, student learning activities, assessment, and evaluation

Taking Action with Teacher Research

Taking Action with Teacher Research Review

More and more, classroom teachers are using action research strategies to tackle basic issues and daily dilemmas-everything from designing their own professional development to reshaping instructional practice. Through their support of teachers who are eager to take up this work, Ellen Meyers and Frances Rust have found that the challenges to the reform of public schools are most likely to surface in three areas: resources needed to meet standards, conditions of the workplace, and status of the teaching profession. Their book is a lucid guide for teachers to address these and other problems in classrooms and beyond; to ask the right questions and design and implement research to find answers; and to use this data to effect change.

Every chapter contains rich examples of teacher research in action.

• Jane Fung focuses on the conditions of schooling and the status of teachers in an elementary school in downtown Los Angeles.
• Lara Goldstone, teaching in New York's Chinatown, looks at obstacles to successful communication with the parents of her students.
• In a Lower East Side middle school, Matt Wayne confronts the problem of getting appropriate books for struggling eighth-grade students.
• Carol Tureski at a high school in Queens finds that lack of access to high-interest, culturally relevant resources is a significant barrier to facilitating adolescent literacy.
• Janet Price, also at a Queens high school, shows what can happen when teachers set the agenda for professional development around assessment in their school.
• Natasha Warikoo at a Manhattan high school looks at the impact of class size on her teaching of second-language learners in her math class.

When teachers consider themselves to be researchers, not just consumers of research, they are exercising leadership. And when teachers form networks to share their knowledge, they are breaking down obstacles that have thwarted their leadership for so long. Action research empowers teachers to do just that-to lead reform efforts and provide the remedies needed for all children to succeed.

The studies in this book are part of the work of the Teachers Network Policy Institute, whose mission is to give teachers an active voice in education policy making. For more information, contact www.teachersnetwork.org. All proceeds support the Teachers Network Policy Institute.

Doing and Writing Action Research

Doing and Writing Action Research Review

Doing and Writing Action Research provides a clear, comprehensive, and user-friendly guide to the practical aspects of carrying out action research. Written with practitioners involved in workplace-based professional development programs, as well as those on research training courses, in mind, this book covers all the core issues, with guidance on how to present findings, produce a research report that can inform policy, demonstrate the quality of one's research, and be critical and write theoretically. The book contains many worked examples of action research projects, to help illustrate the guidance on producing successful written accounts.

 

Action Research for Teacher Candidates: Using Classroom Data to Enhance Instruction

Action Research for Teacher Candidates: Using Classroom Data to Enhance Instruction Review

Teachers are the single most important element in helping every child succeed in school. Action Research for Teacher Candidates has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed. Robert P. Pelton is also the author of Making Classroom Inquiry Work: Techniques for Effective Action Research, which is designed to serve those who wish to delve deeper into their action research or as leaders in teacher research and reflective practice. These two books serve as both a perfect training curriculum for pre-service teachers at the undergraduate or graduate level and as an excellent vehicle for professional development for in-service teachers.

Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners (ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series)

Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners (ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series) Review

This hands-on, practical guide for ESL/EFL teachers and teacher educators outlines, for those who are new to doing action research, what it is and how it works. Straightforward and reader friendly, it introduces the concepts and offers a step-by-step guide to going through an action research process, including illustrations drawn widely from international contexts. Specifically, the text addresses:

• action research and how it differs from other forms of research
• the steps involved in developing an action research project
• ways of developing a research focus
• methods of data collection
• approaches to data analysis
• making sense of action research for further classroom action.

Each chapter includes a variety of pedagogical activities:

• Pre-Reading questions ask readers to consider what they already know about the topic
• Reflection Points invite readers to think about/discuss what they have read
• action points ask readers to carry out action-research tasks based on what they have read
• Classroom Voices illustrate aspects of action research from teachers internationally
• Summary Points provide a synopsis of the main points in the chapter

Bringing the 'how-to' and the 'what' together, Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching is the perfect text for BATESOL and MATESOL courses in which action research is the focus or a required component.

Action Research Essentials (Research Methods for the Social Sciences)

Action Research Essentials (Research Methods for the Social Sciences) Review

Action Research Essentials is a practical guide born of the author's own experience working with students in the social sciences and education, providing a step-by-step outline of how to "do" action research--backed by the most extensive theory and research coverage on the market today. The author guides future researcher/practitioners through the action research process via numerous concrete illustrations and a wealth of on-line resources; positioning it as a fundamental component of practice,

A key and unique strength of the book is its outreach to a much larger breadth of students than usually found in action research books. This book will illustrate all the steps in action research using examples from education, social work, psychology, sociology, nursing, medicine, and counseling.



The structure of the book is intended as the sole textbook for a course devoted to naturalistic inquiry, practitioner research, or beginning qualitative methods, or can complement a general research course.

A Toolkit for Action Research

A Toolkit for Action Research Review

This book facilitates the completion of action research studies by providing a series of tasks that guide action researchers from the beginning of a project and selecting a topic for study, to completion of the project and editing final reports. All too often, students and practicing professionals in professional development schools are overwhelmed by the thought of doing an action research project and resort to using quasi-experimental designs. iA Toolkit for Action Researchi puts an end to both, with the result being a life-long learning and reflection tool for teachers.