UNIT ONE: MEANINGS AND THE BASIC CONCEPTS OF REFLECTION

Reflection: Meanings and Natures

Understanding Reflection
• Reflection originates from the Latin word refectere, meaning "to bend back."
• It has applications in grammar, physics, and psychology.
• In grammar, a reflexive pronoun refers to the subject of a verb.
• In physics, reflection refers to the return of light, heat, or sound after striking a surface.
• In psychology, reflection refers to a mental image or representation.

Understanding Reflection
• Reflection involves a state of doubt, hesitation, perplexity, or mental difficulty where
thinking originates.
• It involves an active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of
knowledge.
• Reflection involves thinking about what one is doing, entails a process of contemplation
with openness to being changed, a willingness to learn, and a sense of responsibility for doing
one’s best.
• Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think
about it, mull over & evaluate it.

Categories of Reflection
• Nature of reflection: Returning to experience, connections, evaluation.
• Connections: Connecting a particular aspect of their teaching experience with plans for
instruction.
• Evaluation: Evaluating experiences and development of a teacher.

Case Study: Aby, a new English teacher at Joint Military College, reflects on her teaching
methods and student progress.
• Reflection-in-action: Reflection takes place in the midst of action, not after the task or
experience is accomplished.
• Reflection-on-action: Reflection involves a sequence of action then thought, looking back at
your practice or experience after it is accomplished to see how it went.
Case Analysis: Individual Issues and Reflection Processes

• Almaz: An English teacher who plans her lessons carefully but fails to follow them.
• Alem: A civic teacher who uses student-centered methods but fails to engage his students.
• Helen: A competitive freshman student who is frequently interrupted by boys in the library.
• Seifu: A mathematics teacher who found himself HIV positive after a year of sexual
activity.

Issues:
• Helen's destructed study habit and frequent interaction with boys led to her academic
readmission.
• She should have critically examined her experience before her readmission and questioned
why she failed.
• Reflection could have led her to respect her study time and reduce her distractions.

Reflective Thinking and Reflective Practice in Education

Reflection as Thinking Process

• The domain of thinking processes includes cognitive, affective, and metacognitive
knowledge, skills, and behaviors.
• It is organized into three dimensions: Reasoning, Processing and Inquiry, Creativity, and
Reflection, Evaluation and Metacognition.

Reasoning, Processing and Inquiry

• Enables students to understand the world and use critical thinking to analyze and evaluate
information.
• Helps students develop opinions based on informed judgments and transform information
into coherent knowledge structures.

Creativity
• Encourages students to seek innovative alternatives and use their imagination to generate
possibilities.
• Helps students take risks with their thinking and make new connections.

Reflection, Evaluation and Metacognition

• Enhances learning by developing the capacity to reflect on and improve existing ideas and
beliefs.
• Helps students question their perspectives and those of others, evaluate the validity of their
own and others’ ideas, and develop metacognitive skills in planning, monitoring, and
evaluating their own thinking processes and strategies.

Reflective Thinking
• Part of the critical thinking process, focusing on the process of making judgments about
what has happened.
• Helps students become more aware of their learning progress, choose appropriate ways to
explore a problem, and build the knowledge they need to solve the problem.

Prompting and Supporting Reflective Thinking in the Classroom

• Teachers should be aware of the features of reflective thinking that enable students to
engage in it.
• Features include:
- Perplexity/puzzle, confusion, doubt.
- Conjectural anticipation/guessing the reasons behind.
- Careful survey (examination, inspection, exploration, analysis).
- Consequent elaboration of the tentative hypothesis/suggest solutions.
- Taking one stand upon the projected hypothesis as a plan of action.

Classroom Reflective Thinking and Reflective Practice

Creating a conducive environment for reflective thinking in the classroom:

• Provide enough wait-time for students to reflect.
• Provide emotionally supportive environments encouraging re-examination of conclusions.
• Prompt reviews of the learning situation, what is known, what is not yet known, and what
has been learned.
• Provide real tasks involving ill-structured data to encourage reflective thinking during
learning activities.
• Prompt students' reflection by asking questions that seek reasons and evidence.
• Provide explanations to guide students' thought processes during explorations.
• Provide a less-structured learning environment that prompts students to explore what they
think is important.
• Provide social-learning environments such as those inherent in peer-group works and small
group activities to allow students to see other points of view.
• Provide a reflective journal to write down students' positions, give reasons to support what
they think, show awareness of opposing positions and the weaknesses of their own positions.

Teacher as Reflective Thinker:

• Active: Voluntarily and willingly taking responsibility for personal actions.
• Reflective: Searching for information and solutions to problems that arise in the classroom.
• Persistent: Becoming committed to thinking through difficult issues in depth.
• Relational: Striving for quality interactions in the classroom to set the tone for learning.
• Evidence seeking: Trying new approaches while documenting their effectiveness and
making adaptations based on evidence in the form of student learning.

Levels of Reflective Practice:

• Technical Reflection: Focuses on strategies and methods used to reach predetermined goals.
• Contextual Reflection: Attempts to understand the theoretical basis for classroom practice.
• Critical Reflection: Reflects on the moral and ethical implications and consequences of
classroom practices on students.
• Extends awareness beyond immediate instructional circumstances to include caring about
democratic foundations and encouraging socially responsible actions.

Reflective Activity: Using Three Levels of Reflection in Classrooms

Case 1: Reflection on Education

• Zemen, a highly intellectual High school biology teacher, emphasizes the importance of life
skills in education.
• She prepares examples and cases to address current challenges like gender stereotypes and
HIV/AIDS.
Case 2: Reflection on Teaching
• Ayele, a primary school teacher, evaluates his and his students' activities against his lesson
plan.
• He evaluates his and his students' actual activities against his lesson plan.

Tradition of Reflection Practice

• Generic tradition: Emphasizes reflective practice as central to teaching and teacher
education.
• Academic tradition: Emphasizes the teacher's role as a scholar and subject matter specialist.
• Social Efficiency tradition: Focuses on the scientific study of teaching to improve methods
of instruction.

Developmentalist Tradition
• Rooted in the child study movement, it assumes that the natural order of development of the
learner determines what should be taught.
• It has three aspects: the teacher-as naturalist, the teacher-as-artist, and the teacher-as
researcher.

Social Reconstructionist Tradition

• Defines both schooling and teacher education as crucial elements in a movement toward a
more just society.
• It recommends teacher educators to be directly involved in teacher education programs,
engaged in political work within colleges and universities, and actively supportive of efforts
within public schools to create more democratic work and learning environments.

Reflection in Education: Benefits and Issues

Reasons for Reflection

• Reflection aims to improve practice by learning directly from experience.
• It involves examining the fundamental assumptions implicit in practice and experience.
• It involves planning to change thinking and practices from this new awareness.
Benefits of Reflection for Learners
• Reflection helps learners understand what they already know, improve their basic academic
skills.
• It helps identify what they need to know to advance understanding of the subject.
• It helps students make sense of new information and feedback in the context of their own
experience.
• It guides choices for further learning.

Benefits of Reflection for Teachers

• Reflection helps teachers become aware of the theory and motives behind their teaching.
• It helps teachers be conscious of potential bias and discrimination.
• It helps avoid past mistakes, solve problems, reduce confusion or frustration, maximize
learning opportunities, and result in feelings of pleasure and self-satisfaction.

Issues of Reflection
• Potential barriers include lack of time, lack of awareness about the purpose of reflection,
fear of judgement and criticism, being closed to feedback and defensiveness, and fear of
professional arrogance.

Solutions for Barriers

• Mentors or teachers should be a role model, give time for reflection, provide non-
judgemental support, and create opportunities for engaging in reflection.
Reflection vs. Technical Rationality in Professional Decision-Making

Understanding Technical Rationality

• Technical rationality refers to the application of scientific theory and techniques in
professional decision-making.
• It involves the possession of specific, scientific, and standardized knowledge, including
basic science, applied science, and specific skills and attitudes related to service provision.

Role of Technical Rationality in Western World

• The rise of scientific and technological explanations for the world's workings over 300
years led to the rise of technical rationality.
• The decline of religion, superstition, and 'fake knowledge' and the replacement with
positivistic science laid the foundation for the rise of technical rationality.

Issues with Technical Rationality

• Professionals often use trial-and-error and 'gut feeling' instead of empirical science in
problem-solving.
• In situations of uncertainty and uniqueness, positivistic knowledge may not have practical
value that professionals reflect on.

Reflection in Working Practice

• Reflection begins in working practice, especially in areas where professionals face unique
and confusing situations.
• Theory may not always explain classroom practice as it should be, and theory is not always
used rigidly.
• Reflection allows for continuous improvement in practice and the development of practice-
based theory.
UNIT 2
Nature of Teaching Complexity

The Problem of Students’ Cooperation

• Teaching is a human improvement practice, relying heavily on active student cooperation.
• Teachers must devote significant effort to make students cooperate, but students may reject
or ignore their efforts due to lack of interest and concentration.

The Problem of Compulsory Students

• The teacher-student relationship is a form of institutionalized domination and subordination.
• Students are pressured to attend school due to various factors, including parental
expectations, market pressures, and social desires.

The Problem of Emotion Management

• Teachers must establish and manage an emotional relationship with students.
• There is no prepared guidebook for managing emotions in a particular classroom, making it
complex for teachers to manage emotions.

The Problem of Structural Isolation

• Teachers often teach within self-contained classrooms, managing a group of 45-60 students
and moving them through the curriculum.
• Teachers need to establish control issues to ensure learning and prevent students from
controlling the teacher.

The Problem of Chronic Uncertainty about the Effectiveness of Teaching

• The technology of teaching is unpredictable, introducing unpredictable elements of will and
emotion into the teaching and learning processes.
• The knowledge about teaching is dependent on various overruling variables that mediate
between a teacher’s action and a student’s response.
• The effect of teachers on students is not always measured, leading to a dilemma in
instructional preparation.
• The contradictory purposes imposed on the educational enterprise also complicate the
teaching and learning process.
The Teacher's Client
• Teachers do not know exactly their client because they are many and different, including
the student, parents of the student, and the community at large.

Teaching Dilemmas and Challenges

Challenges Faced by Teachers

• Teachers face challenges such as balancing the needs and interests of some students over
others.
• Teachers may face dilemmas due to clash of values, uncertainty about facts, failure to be
unaccepted, deficiency in courage, misdirected desire to be popular, uncertainty about
position, perceptions, and concerns about the merits of decisions.

Definition of Teaching Dilemma

• Dilemmas can arise from clashing needs of individual teachers and those of institutions.
• Teachers must balance their specific tasks and moral duties as academic citizens and
community members.
• Teachers must decide how far to press students to participate in class and whether to leave
them alone after a minimum non-pushy invitation.
• Teachers must consider the impact of their help on students' autonomy, self-reliance, and
independent learning.

Relationship Between Teaching and Research

• Teachers should balance their time and energy devoted to teaching with research and
writing activities.
• Sharing their problems with others can be seen as a form of professional growth.
• Teachers should use their power to gain respect and listen to students.

Proposed Solutions for Teachers Faced with Dilemma

• Teachers should identify conflicting ideas that create dilemmas and propose how to deal
with each case.
Professionalism of Teaching: Teacher Thinking, Creativity, and Teacher Learning

Teacher Thinking
• Teacher thinking is defined as the set of cognitions, mental representations that influence
teachers' perception of their job.
• Teachers possess knowledge about content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge,
general pedagogical knowledge, classroom management, student characteristics, personal
value orientations, beliefs about the purpose of education, roles of teachers, and expectations
for different students.

Teacher Learning and Change

• Teachers play a significant role in achieving societal goals and are responsible for teaching
and guiding students.
• Teachers learn in various learning situations: pre-service teacher education, in-service
program, and reflective practice.
• Pre-service education focuses on academic knowledge, personal development, and general
pedagogical knowledge, but often lacks opportunities for reflective practice, interpersonal
and communication skills, interdisciplinary approaches, dialogue, and teamwork.
• In-service programs provide additional skills for teachers to adapt to changing roles and
functions within the teaching system.

Reflective Practice
• Teachers need to be reflective to deal with uncertainties and dilemmas in everyday
decisions that affect students.
• Reflective practice helps teachers recognize behaviors and practices that impede their
potential for tolerance and acceptance.
• It frees teachers from routine and impulsive acts, enabling them to act in a more deliberative
and intentional manner.
• Emerging beliefs about quality teaching support teachers developing as reflective
practitioners.
• Major curricular changes that emphasize socialization and collaboration require
fundamental changes in the way teachers view their role.
Teaching Roles and Importance
• Teachers help students develop self-direction, self-regulation, and self-reflection.
• These qualities are fundamental for democratic citizenship.
• Learning about teaching profession can be accessed through pre-service, in-service
programs, or reflective practice.

Teaching Roles, Change in Society, and Reflection

Role of Teachers in Society

• Teachers play a crucial role in the education system and society.
• They have three main areas: knowledge and skill, social inclusion, and professional
development of the teacher's role.

Knowledge and Skills – Local Issue

• Teachers possess a unique set of knowledge and skills that are 'transmitted' to learners.
• Literacy ability of children is strongly associated with the educational provision of teachers
and schools.
• Parents' positive home circumstances and shared books with children reflect the work of
teachers a generation earlier.

Social inclusion – A Societal Issue

• Teachers have been diversified to address the social inclusion of all students.
• National policy initiatives driven by social justice and harmonization agenda have led to a
more diversified teaching approach.

Professional Development of the Teacher’s Role

• Teachers are increasingly expected to help young people become fully autonomous learners.
• They are expected to develop more collaborative and constructive approaches to learning.
• To equip teachers with skills and competences for their new roles, high-quality initial
teacher education and continuous professional development are necessary.

Teaching and Change in Society

• Education is at the forefront of the world's concern over its own future.
• The challenges of the coming century to eliminate poverty and ensure sustainable
development and lasting peace will fall to today's young people.

Teacher Roles in the Changing World

• The development of ICT has a greater impact on a teacher’s work than changes in political,
economical, and environmental aspects.
• Teachers who intensively use information technology emphasize the importance of using it
for facilitating students’ participation in progressive inquiry, collaborative learning, and
active engagement in knowledge formation process.

Challenges of the Teachers in the Changing World

• Teachers will face challenges in the age of globalization, including cultural differences,
technological changes, economic difficulties, lack of literacy experience, gangsterism, and
attitude problems.

Teacher-Student Relationships: A Comprehensive Overview

Teacher-Student Relationships
• Teachers have three main areas: the relationship with students, other staff members, and
society at large.
• Teachers collaborate with students, other teachers, school administrators, families, and
community members to foster learning success and healthy student development.

Teacher-Student Relationships
• The relationship between teachers and students has been a focus for over 2000 years, with
philosophical guidelines established by Plato, Socrates, and Confucius.
• The 20th century has seen a proliferation of ideas fostering teacher-student relationships,
with John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and B. F. Skinner defining teachers as transmitters of
knowledge and students as passive recipients.

Redefining the Teacher-Student Relationship

• The advent of cognitive psychology redefined the relationship between teachers and
students, focusing on constructivism and forming a community of learners.
• Teachers are seen as facilitators who guide and enrich children's learning activities, with
students serving as co-contributors to the learning process.

Teachers and School Staff

• Teachers' relationships with peers, other school staff, and school administrators are often
isolated.
• New teachers should expect mentor teachers to maintain harmony and support, rather than
developing competence.

Increasing the Positive Relationship between Teachers and School Staff

• Professional and organizational change is needed to establish a positive relationship
between participative decision-making and classroom instruction, increase innovations,
professional development activities, teacher exchange of ideas and knowledge, and improved
understanding of learning and classroom instruction.

Teacher-Parent Communication and Community Relationships

• Teacher-parent relationships significantly impact students' learning and well-being.
• Parent involvement programs promote desirable student outcomes such as decreased teen
pregnancy, increased graduation rates, and improved achievement and school attendance.
• Teachers can encourage parental involvement through home visits and parent teacher
conferences.
• Participating parents are more likely to further their education and provide increased
support to their children and their learning needs.
• Positive relationships among parents and teachers amplify resources of home and school
contexts, enhancing the likelihood of positive outcomes for children.

Teachers and the Community

• Schools need to maximize the use of resources available in their communities.
• Teachers can incorporate parents' skills and knowledge and local organizations and
programs into their curriculum.
• Teachers collaborate with local universities, museums, and community service
organizations to expand cultural resources and enhance the educational experience.
• Teachers may work with social workers, family counselors, local health care providers to
address and fulfill the needs of their students.
Girma's Case Study
• English teacher Girma focuses on students' communication skills and encourages active
participation.
• Girma is concerned about students cutting his class to go 'chat and shisa' houses, which are
found around the schools.
• Girma worked with the principal to identify the root reasons and lead for permanent
solutions.
• A two-day workshop was prepared and a decision was made to displace 'chat and shisa'
houses and build recreational places instead.

Understanding Professional Identity as a Teacher

Understanding Professional Identity

• Professional identity refers to attitudes, beliefs, experiences, ideals, and principles that
define a person's professional career.
• It is shaped by interactions and professional experiences.

Determining the Type of Teacher

• Teachers gain professional identity through teaching experience.
• Teachers' dispositions can be divided into four areas:

Able/Unable
• The able teacher sees students as capable of problem-solving.
• The unable teacher doubts students' abilities to make decisions.

Identified/Unidentified
• The identified teacher relates easily with people, especially from diverse backgrounds.
• The unidentified teacher feels oneness only with those of similar belief.

Larger/Smaller
• The larger teacher has a global perspective beyond immediate context.
• The smaller teacher focuses on specific goals.
People/Things
• The people teacher is concerned with the human aspects of day-to-day life.
• The things teacher is preoccupied with impersonal, detail-oriented management aspects of
education.

Identifying Teachers' Dispositions

• Teachers can be categorized based on their dispositions.
• Examples include Abebe, Zewdu, Alemu, and Almaz.

Teachers as Lifelong Learners: Understanding Continuous Professional Development (CPD)

Understanding Lifelong Learning

• Lifelong learning is an individualistic enterprise that aims to improve teaching skills.
• CPD is an educational activity that helps maintain, develop, or increase knowledge,
problem-solving, technical skills, or professional performance standards.
• CPD is essential for maintaining and enhancing knowledge, skills, and capabilities to
remain effective and competent.

Approaches to CPD
• Teachers can use CPD in school through whole-college training days, mentoring, peer
observation, collaborative planning, and self-evaluation.
• Teachers can build networks outside of school through visiting other colleges, attending
conferences, joint training exercises, joining teacher networks, and engaging with specialist
subject associations.
• Outside the school environment, teachers can attend short courses by NGOs, study for
higher degrees, and provide opportunities for community learning.

Rational and Purposes of CPD

• Increases authenticity and commitment to learning.
• Increases focus and personal accountability in learning.
• Increases insight into one's own teaching and helps define a personal vision for one's
practice.
• Increases teachers' self-affirmation through learning.
• CPD programs in schools increase competence and growth, rather than deficits and
judgment.
UNIT THREE:

THE NOTION OF REFLECTIVE TEACHING

Reflective Teaching: A Comprehensive Overview

Understanding Reflective Teaching

• Reflective teaching involves continuous self-evaluation and a willingness to learn.
• Reflective teachers face the challenge of seeing themselves and their teaching from a
different perspective.
• Reflective teaching involves critical self-evaluation, which can be emotionally challenging.

Routine Action vs Reflection Action

• Routine action is guided by tradition, external authority, and circumstance.
• Reflective teaching involves active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or
knowledge.
• Reflective teachers consistently assess the origins, purposes, and consequences of their
work.

Case 1: Reflective Teachers Vs. Non-Reflective Teachers

• Non-reflective teachers react without considering alternative responses, leading to a narrow
range of potential solutions.
• Non-reflective teachers are reactive, attributing problems to students or others, and view
student and classroom circumstances as beyond their control.
• Reflective teachers consider both the intended and unintended consequences of their actions
and engage in thoughtful reconsideration of classroom interactions.
• Reflective teachers recognize, learn from, and strive to correct their mistakes, thereby
achieving their professional potential.

Becoming a Reflective Teacher: Attitudes and Practices

Three Essential Attitudes of Reflective Practitioners

• Open-mindedness: Open-mindedness involves considering new evidence and admitting the
possibility of error. It involves listening to multiple perspectives and recognizing the
possibility of error.
• Responsibility: Responsibility involves considering the consequences of one's actions,
especially as they affect students. It involves examining all decision making from a coherent
philosophical framework of teaching and learning.
• Wholeheartedness: Wholeheartedness is characterized as a commitment to seek every
opportunity to learn.

Three Essential Practices for Developing as a Reflective Practitioner

• Solitary reflection: Time for thoughtful consideration of actions and critical inquiry into the
impact of one's own behavior keeps teachers alert to the consequences of their actions on
students.
• Ongoing inquiry: Unending questioning of the status quo and conventional wisdom by
seeking one's own truth.
• Perpetual problem-solving: Constantly seeking new information to find better solutions,
build relationships, and teach students new coping strategies.

Case 2: A Reflective Practitioner

• A person who is inherently curious, confident, and open to challenges.
• A good listener, a good listener, and a good listener.
• A person who is able to see things from another's perspective and is sensitive to the needs
and feelings of others.
• A person who can relax and lean back and let others assume the responsibility of their own
learning.

Adapting Reflection in to One’s Teaching Repertoire

• Preparing a framework for guiding the discussion.
• Leading the group by actively engaging each student.
• Setting the tone by establishing norms of behavior.
• Clarifying students' responsibilities and expectations.
• Arousing interest and commitment to the service learning.
• Assessing the values, knowledge, and skills that each student brings to the project.
• Developing background information about the people and problems the students will
encounter in the service situations.
• Getting closure on emotional/affective issues by the end of each reflective session.
• Leaving some cognitive/topical issues open until the next session for group members to
think more about them.

Reflection Strategies in Teaching

Reflection Strategies
• Preservice and novice teachers need explicit prompting to think, respond, and act in new
ways.
• Mentoring or coaching can enhance reflection by allowing teachers to tap into their own
experiences and construct personal meaning.
• Self-monitoring and self-reflective activities early on can promote self-awareness.
• Reflection strategies help teachers and students address problems and learning challenges,
deepen understanding, and generate new insights.

Tools for Reflection

• Journal writing, teacher narratives, autobiography, metaphor, critical incidents, support
groups, critical friends, and action research are useful tools for promoting reflection.
• Merging these task structures in creative ways and utilizing them individually,
collaboratively, and with facilitated coaching is likely to have the greatest potential for
promoting higher-order reflection.

Teacher Narratives (Autobiography and Metaphor)

• Teacher narratives provide a rich understanding of what takes place in the minds of
developing teachers as they construct their reality of teaching.
• Autobiographical sketches offer insight into the past to uncover preconceived theories of
practice.
• Metaphors help teachers become aware of their teaching identities and develop alternative
ways to think about an issue.

Critical Incidents
• Critical incidents can be a chosen real-world example or case study of a teaching dilemma
intended to serve as a springboard for reflection.
• Sharing critical incident responses promotes critical reflection in novice teachers.
Portfolios
• Professional portfolios vary from online documents to 3-ring binder folios.
• Portfolios encourage novice teachers to reflect about important areas such as state and/or
national teaching standards.
• Portfolios can promote reflective thinking at various levels of deliberation on practical
teaching matters and at higher levels of questioning institutional goals.

Case Study Analysis

• Case study analysis can stimulate teacher reflection by requiring preservice teachers to
review unique and challenging situations and to reflect on potential solutions.
• Student input is a valuable tool for reflecting on practice.

Action Research in Education

• Inquiry-based research that examines existing practices, implements new ones, and
evaluates results.
• A powerful tool for local level change and improvement.
• Active participation in educational research leads to better decision-making and effective
practices.
• Teachers work in their own environment, with their students, on directly affecting
problems.
• Main purpose is to improve understanding of teaching practice and influence research
focus.
• Participatory research usually involves collaboration between researchers.
• Evidence collected is qualitative and meaningful to all involved.
• Reflective activity involves using new strategies for reflection on teaching experience.
Unit Four: Action Research as a Strategy for Reflection

Action Research as a Strategy for Reflection

Understanding Action Research

• Action research is a systematic, critical, and self-critical enquiry aimed at improving
educational practice.
• It combines a substantive act with a research procedure, combining a substantive act with a
research procedure.
• When applied to teaching, action research involves gathering and interpreting data to
understand an aspect of teaching and learning and applying the outcomes to improve practice.
• It is a flexible spiral process that allows action (change, improvement) and research
understanding (knowledge) to be achieved simultaneously.
• It is cyclic, with action and critical reflection taking place in turn.
• It is particularly attractive to educators due to its practical, problem-solving emphasis.

Understanding Action Research

• Action research involves reviewing current practice, identifying areas for improvement,
imagining a way forward, trying it out, taking stock of what happens, modifying the plan in
light of what we have found, and continuing with the action.
• It is carried out by individuals, professionals, and educators.
• It involves research, systematic, critical reflection, and action.

Differences between Action Research and Other Research

• There are many different types of research and numerous views on their nature, how it
should be conducted, and what it aims to achieve.
Action Research vs Other Types of Education Research

Types of Education Research

• Robson cites various types of research including ethnography, quantitative behavioural
science, phenomenology, action research, hermeneutics, evaluation research, feminist
research, critical social science, historical-comparative research, and theoretical research.
• Blaxter et al. list various types of research including pure, applied and strategic research,
descriptive, explanatory and evaluation research, exploratory, testing-out and problem-
solving research, covert, adversarial and collaborative research, basic, applied, instrumental,
and action research.

Rationale for Action Research

• Action research is a medium for teachers to study their own practice and develop their own
educational theories.
• Success in action research depends on the researcher's ability to ask pertinent questions, test
assumptions, and engage in systematic thinking about relationships between theory and
practice.
• Teachers should be at the forefront of educational research and classrooms provide an ideal
context to test educational theories.
• Teachers have lacked opportunities to take on a more substantial role in the research
process.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Teachers

• Action research is the most effective way and tool for teachers’ professional development.
• High schools, colleges, and higher education institutions have designed CPD in their policy
and practically introduced into their teacher daily roles and responsibilities.
• CPD activities take many forms, including attending courses, school-based learning, and
undertaking action research.

Action Research Steps Overview

Step 1: Identifying an Issue

• Identify an issue of importance to the teacher.
• Formulate research questions that are directly related to the chosen issue or problem.
• Ensure the questions are answerable, considering factors like scope, size, feasibility, and
importance.

Step 2: Learning More about the Issue

• Develop researchable questions about the identified issue.
• Rework the research questions and the topic as needed.
• Gather information through conversations with other teachers, administrators, students, and
other sources.
• As you search for specific sources that increase your knowledge of the topic, more will be
found that will help.

Steps in Research Planning and Strategy

Reviewing Related Literature

• Refers to any existing source of information that can provide insight on the chosen topic.
• Helps in making informed decisions about the research focus and plan.
• Provides guidance for defining or limiting the problem.
• Develops an appropriate design for the action research project.
• Selects legitimate instruments or techniques for data collection.
• Connects research to others’ insights, discoveries, recommendations.
• Indicates topics.
• Establishes a connection between the action research project and what others have said,
done, and discovered.

Developing a Research Plan and Strategy for Your Study

• A research plan is a way of charting the actual research undertaking.
• It includes converting the topic to research questions and selecting an appropriate design for
data collection and analysis.
• A good research question is a fundamental question inherent in the research problem.
• Three major characteristics make a good research questions: the issue chosen to explore
must be important, the questions are directly related to the issue or problem, and the
questions are answerable.

Developing a Plan for Your Research Project

• Using the identified topic, develop a plan for the research project.
• Ask questions about what to do, how to collect and analyze data, what baseline and post-
intervention data will be collected, how to know the process went well, how to communicate
with key figures, have all necessary permissions, how to remember to do the intervention,
visual cues, how to monitor consistency, have developed all necessary instruments to gather
data, and readiness to handle the data safely and ethically.
Data Collection in Action Research

Understanding Data
• Data is any information that can answer research questions.
• Good data are directly related to the questions, providing direct answers.
• Data can come from various sources such as tallies, demographic information, surveys, test
results, observations, interviews, and documents.

Primary Data Collection Methods

• Questionnaires: Clearly explain the purpose of the research, ensure confidentiality and
anonymity, and conduct a pilot for language, reliability, and validity.
• Interviews: Prepare questions, determine the type of interview, and consider the design of
open and closed questions.
• Observations: Observe students or teachers, and explain the purpose of the research.
• Field notes: Keep systematic notes of the group and document significant aspects of the
action.
• Audio recording: Decide points to be covered, organize transcription of the tapes, and
explain the reason for the recordings.
• Digital recording: Book the equipment, know how to use the digital camera, and consider
how to limit the effects of being filmed.

Research Ethics
• Research ethics must be considered as projects are planned and data are collected.
• Students' permission to use the information is required, ensuring their participation is
voluntary and promising confidentiality.
• Baseline data: Gather baseline data before starting the intervention to compare study results.
• Homework completion rate: Determine if there has been a change as a result of the
intervention.

Action Research Data Analysis and Development

Data Analysis in Action Research

• Data analysis is a crucial step in action research, combining traditional quantitative and
qualitative research methods.
• In action research, data is analyzed inductively, reducing collected information into
important themes or categories.
• Data should be sorted into piles with broader characteristics, and summaries should capture
the essence of each broader characteristic.
• Data should be on paper, read over at least once, and sorted according to the questions
asked.
• Data not directly related to the posed questions should be discarded.

Developing an Action Plan

• The action plan is the proposed strategy for implementing the results of the action research
project.
• The action plan must be continually monitored, evaluated, and revised.
• The plan includes capturing data analysis results, formulating future action plans, charting
future implementation strategies, and providing a more formally written report.
• Reflection and organization are integral parts of this stage, including a strategy for
implementing changes, recommending actions, identifying responsible parties, monitoring
future data, setting a timeline for implementing actions, and specifying necessary resources.

Action Plan Development and Sharing

• Developing an action plan involves preparing an action chart outlining research questions,
actions, actors, supporters, time, and resources.
• The plan should guide the development of an action plan for the action research project.

Taking Action and Sharing/Communicating Results

• Actions should be taken based on the results of the research.
• Results and actions can be shared through various means such as final presentations,
formally written reports, newsletters, leaflets, brochures, journals, monographs, and websites.
• Sharing results reduces the gap between research and practical application in educational
settings.
• Sharing provides opportunities for further insight, reflection, and rewarding professional
experience.
• The final stage involves sharing findings with others, often through informal conversations
or discussions.
• Writing the report of the project has three critical purposes: it provides additional insights,
leaves a permanent record of the research, and contributes to the body of knowledge beyond
the researcher.
• The final report serves the purpose of sharing knowledge gained through action research
with others in a community of practice.
• A good action research portfolio documents practices at each step of the inquiry, providing
critical mass for reflection and recognizing change of practice.

Reflecting on Action Research Process and Results

• Reflection occurs before, during, and after the research process.

• The final stage of reflection reiterates the processes and results obtained.
• Reflection is a learning process experienced after completing the project.
• The action research process is empowering, allowing for identification and exploration of
issues and teaching changes.
• Reflection within the processes involves looking back on actions after data collection.
• It deals with thoughts, changes, best practices, and surprises.
• Reflection is a set of connections between past, present, and future events.
• It provides a deep understanding of why events occurred and how they addressed the
question.
• Reflection is a powerful learning experience and an essential part of action research.

Action Research Proposal Development

• Identifying the focus of researchable issues: Identify areas of instructional planning,

teaching methods, learning assessments, classroom management, instructional materials, and
gender issues/social inclusion.
• Evaluating research topic: Assess its interest, originality, significance, importance,
feasibility, importance, doability, and ethics.
• Creating a SMART (Simple, Measurable, Relevant, Time-bound, and Ethical) approach:
1. Introduction:
• Provide a context for the research and introduce yourself and the topic.
• Write the introduction part.

2. Why am I concerned?
• State the reason for being interested in the chosen issue and the objective of the research.

3. How will I produce evidence of my influence?

• State methods and instruments of data gathering and data collection.
• Use evidence such as observation, attendance sheet, and FGD/interview to prove the
existence of the problem.

4. How will I analyze my data?

• Analyze findings qualitatively or quantitatively.

5. What will I do based on what I found out?

• Suggest possible actions to solve the problem.

6. What kind of evidence can I produce to show that what I am doing is having an impact?
• Gather data regularly and keep records of how you are monitoring and evaluating each
cycle.

7. How will I evaluate that impact?

• Use data to say how your practice has changed overall.

8. How will I ensure that any judgments I make are reasonable, fair, and accurate?

9. How will I transfer what I have learned about my research?

• Write a formal AR report and submit it to the Physics department.

10. Write resources and reference:

• Write activities to complete the Action research project against the time it would take.
• Write any reference materials in case of used.