Ethics of Action Research

Ethical responsibilities:

1. Determine if research requires review board
2. obtain approval
3. seek participants’ informed consent
4. consider confidentiality,  anonymity and avoidance of harm
5. no deception
6. develop an ethical research perspective
7. ensure accuracy in data reporting

The action researcher teacher must above all ensure her research is conducted ethically.  Without this, the research becomes tainted and possible invalid.  After a developing a well thought out research plan, including data gathering techniques and intentions concerning the dissemination of information, one should determine if approval IRB is needed.  This approval will give the researcher validity and professional backing.  Next, the researcher must inform all parties involved in writing of the intended study, its intended audience, and level of confidentiality and anonymity of participants including the administrators, peer teachers, parents, and students involved in the research.  It is advisable to obtain written permission from all concerned.  To help guide the researcher’s methods, she should develop an ethical research perspective which clearly defines the researcher’s ethical position.  Finally, the researcher must ensure accuracy and transparency in reporting all data. 

The two student researchers in the videos were polar opposites in their approach to creating a structure of ethical action research.  Doug was very methodical and professional in his approach.  He began with a letter to the parents and administrators stating his intent, parameters of his project, and his intended audience.  He obtained permission from all involved and allowed his students to have a voice in the process of information dissemination.  In contrast, Jeannette displayed a lack of regard for the ethical considerations of action research.  In her own words, she admitted to deception of intent and failure to obtain consent from the primary parties.  Due to her lack of preparation, she set her research up for failure.  Had she obtained permission and been forthcoming with her intent of research topic, she very likely would have received cooperation from her peers and the school administration.  Yet, due to her deviousness, she set up a potentially hostile and defensive environment which will certainly limit her ability to gather data in a neutral environment and frame of mind.

Critique of Curtis Elementary School Case Study

1. Area of focus:  Does not define what type or the subject of “performance” that the researchers are interested in.    The teacher, Jonathan, states that the area of focus will “describe the effect of an ‘altered curriculum” on student achievement in reading.”  How will “altered curriculum” be measured?  These should be spelled out in the original plan, or modified and quantifies throughout the research.

2. Research questions:  What is the effect of “altered curriculum” on student performance?   This research question should be better defined.  What student performance is being measure?  What types of altered curriculum are being considered?

3. Locus of control:  Jonathan defines his research as ocurring on his own students.  This is within his locus of control.

4. Data collection:  The teacher originally declares three methods data collection:  comprehension/recall activities, cloze procedures in reading passages, and reading and retelling of specified passages.  However, he ends up using data collected from student journals and anecdotal observations, as he indicated in his “Data Collection Ideas”.  These other sources should have been formally declared and quantified if he intended to use them.

5. Ethics:  No mention of informed consent from parents or students or IRB.  No mention of how the data will be used.  The measures of anonymity or confidentiality are not stated. The intended audience is not declared.  Information is not provided regarding how data about the participants will be disseminated.

6. Reflective stance: 

Jonathan observed and reflected.  He seemed to use these reflections as a way to make sense of his observations.  He seems willing and eager to use what he is learning to make positive changes to his teaching.

7. Action:   The teacher clearly takes action in his classroom as a result of the research.  He makes positive changes that support student achievement and growth.

8. Action-data connection:   Many of the proposed actions involve vocabulary development.  However, it seemed that the basis for the research was to try to improve student scores on state reading comprehension tests.  In particular, the teacher wanted to improve how students constructed meaning from a reading.  Due to the vague nature of the research question, the teacher researcher wandered from his original query.  He does propose action based on positive correlations found during his research but the actions suggested are primarily vocabulary comprehension and development. 

Researcher Biases

Proposition statements (potential researcher biases)

1. Use of talking to learn increases memory retention.

I fully expect to find that talking to learn will increase memory retention.  However, this may only work when the atmosphere or situation is favorable for the student.  Furthermore, I am assuming all students learn like I do.  Perhaps this may not prove valuable to a kinetic learner.  Perhaps a test of memory with and without the voice-echo device can give feedback to whether this is a valid statement for different types of learners under standard classroom settings. 

2. Use of voice echo will create a neuro-memory echo and gather the learner’ attention to the sounds heard.

It seems that my research already supports this statement.  The question is whether the learner will use the attention to the sounds as a tool for converting them into written symbolic forms (I.e., letters, and words).

3. The use of voice echo technique will improve emergent writer’s attention to sound and increase student independence when sounding out words.

I need to assume if there is an increase of writing using the voice echo technique, that the learner has had an increase of attention.  I find in my own experience, that I want the students that are working with the voice echo devices to succeeded and thus give them more attention.  If I provide the students with a standardized training program with using the voice echo devices, then I can step back and let them work.  This will provide an opportune occasion to collect qualitative data collection by documenting each time a student asks for help while using the voice echo technique (by a running tally chart).  I may want to have collected data regarding students requesting help before my research begins, as well as collect data on students not using the voice echo technique to provide a comparison.   In addition, the use of audio or video recordings and observational notes may allow me to gain insight to learners using peer mediated techniques rather than relying solely on the voice-echo technique.

4. The use of talk to learn will improve the learner’ ability to sound out words and thus encourage the use of more extensive vocabulary rather than a strong reliance on sight words.

Creating a chart/code to quantify the types of words writers’ use may help with quantifying this data.  Perhaps if the student correctly uses a sight word or environmental print word (i.e. color words posted in the room) the writer gets a point.  The writer will also get a point for each phoneme of words correctly sounded out that are not in these categories.  Perhaps also noting the ratio of sight words/environmental print and other words attempted may give me a good alternative perspective to how the learner is using words with the voice echo device and without.  

5. Learner’s ability to do above will improve sentence form and length rather than relying on known words and formulaic sentences.

Creating a point scale to quantify the writer’s use of sentence (thought) length and varying description will help to make valid the learners’ use of the voice echo technique.

Data Collection

My research topic concerns using voice echo techniques to improve independent writing skills for emergent writers.  However, in my research I found precious little research has been done on the correlations between voice echo and memory or learning.  I had to really look to find research concerning talk to learn techniques.  While I seriously considered changing my topic, I do believe I am even more committed now to research something that so little is known about.  I do have reservations though.  Is this a dead topic because it doesn’t work?  Or is it a topic that hasn’t really been considered?  I.e., am I a dupe or a genius?

The process of hunting down information or connections to my topic has led me to consider other factors that may enhance learning.  Some of these factors are connected to my topic and need to be addressed in my research to help validate the results and data.  Furthermore, the process of research has opened my eyes to the magnitude of what this research could and should entail to be entirely valid.  As a teacher/researcher, I suppose that classroom data collection is a good start to see if the voice-echo technique has a correlation to increased learning and performance.  However, if I were to take this research to the next level; I would want to work with audiologists regarding varying sound levels, pitch, background noise, and memory or attention variants.

To begin my research, I would test this method over a 9 week period within my own classroom.  This would limit my findings, but would give me a good start to look at correlations.  If positive correlations were noted, I could then enlist the aid of fellow teachers to join me in data collection.  I would need to make three study groups: a control group, a peer mediated group, and a voice echo group.  From my research, I need to consider if the act of talking increases the level of performance and learning or if it is the sounds directly filtering into the ear that has an added benefit.  Because of the three group study, it would limit my results to a correlation of data results from 8 students.  This seems extremely narrow, but it is a start. 

For data collection I would focus on quantitative techniques: writing samples, journal samples (undirected writing responses), and parent and student questionnaires, tally the requests for teacher intervention; and qualitative methods:  video recordings/observation, informal interviews.

Here is my working Triangulation Matrix:

Research questions	1	2	3
1. keep on task	Tally	Observation	Student interview
2. improve writing word level	Running records	Journal observation
3. increase risk taking with writing- sentence level	Running records	Journal observation	Parent interview
4. decrease teacher intervention	Tally	observation
5. attitude towards writing	Parent questionnaire	Student questionnaire	observation

road to teaching: action research topic bubble map

road to teaching: action research topic bubble map


I began my action research bubble map with the thought that I might like to research how phonics phones would affect student writing performance. However, the more information that I filled in, the clearer it became that I had other questions regarding the writing process. Working with kindergartners, I notice that they have a very hard time writing independently. They often do not want to write or they write formulaic style sentences that do not reflect true thoughts. If you are unable to communicate your thoughts, you must revert to uninspiring and unchallenging formulaic sentence structure and vocabulary. Reading these are really boring- thus writing them must be really boring too. If children were given tools and strategies to empower them to write their thoughts independently with out relying on the formulaic structure, small list of sight word vocabulary, or the limited environmental print, or a teacher's presence, perhaps they will be inspired to write more frequently. I used the structure of critical query questions (p. 63) posed in the Jenny and Snyder article to help define where my problem statement.

action research topic bubble map

Culural Image of teacher

blog-3 Cultural Image of teacher

It seems that the American image of “teacher” closely resembles that of “mother”.  The image of teacher is young 25-35, pretty (not a knock-out), soft, warm, inviting, and conservative.  Teachers are often portrayed as nurturing, altruistic, and virtuous.  “Teacher” is usually defined as a white woman teaching elementary aged students.  The negative alternative stereotype of an angry, domineering teacher is more often paired with older students.  Few women of diverse ethnic or racial backgrounds are depicted.  Men are less often portrayed as teacher than are women.  For those men that are part of the public image, usually they are math and science teachers of high school students.  They are often viewed as the “leader” role in front of the class.
The interesting thing that I found during this collage work is how often our image of ourselves as “teacher” falls into these stereotypical images shown in the collages.  Most of the women’s “portrait of a teacher” drawings were of smiley, long haired, slender women. Only one woman defined her self as a science teacher.  The men’s portraits had echoes of the cultural ideal of the “man teacher”.  Two of the three men clearly defined themselves as math and science teachers.  The “man teacher” was the hoarder of space in the picture (think back to non-verbal communication and gender roles), where as the women were often depicted as a part of the class room space. 
I have to agree, that the stereotypes are here for a reason.  We seem to self-select teachers and ourselves to fulfill these roles.  I had to question myself as to how comfortable I am in supporting this stereotype.  I did not want to be a teacher when I was younger as I felt that it was too much of a women’s slot job.  I was not willing to assume a “mother” role as a career.  I wonder if these strong societal stereotypes keep others from seeking out a career in teaching.  Would more men feel comfortable teaching in elementary schools if it was portrayed as a “man’s job”?  Would more children that are minorities want to grow up to be a teacher if they could see themselves in the role through cultural images?

blog 2- what is a good teacher

What is a good teacher?

A good teacher is….

inspiring, patient, encouraging, strong, educated, multi-tasker, flexible, creative, caring, nurturing, open, friendly, warm, inviting, challenging, supportive, inclusive, learner, thinker,…. and more.

Looking at the pictures from the Phillip and Carr article, I notice that the teacher is definitely the star of the show.  I think only one picture incorporates students- and they are off to the side.  It seems that many times, teachers focus on their own performance.  “That was a great lesson I taught”, or “I got through the curriculum”, or the attitude of “my students are excelling because I am a great teacher” (although somewhat true).  I used to teach a pre-school/kindergarten class.  The children were wonderful and eager learners.  The parents would thank me profusely, knowing that their kids were soaring during their time with me.  However, I would think, “Don’t thank me, this is my job.  It’s the kids that are doing all of the hard work!”

To me, that is what a true teacher is.  A teacher inspires a child to learn and want to learn more.  A teacher challenges children to extend their thinking.  A teacher supports children socially and educationally to grow.  A teacher should not be the focus of the class.  The children must be the focus of the class.  When I teach, I want the children to think of the class room as “our room”, not Mrs. Goldsmith’s busy bees.   A good teacher encourages the growth of the child, and must strive to grow with the child as well.  I guess that we can truly learn from each child in our class and know that it adds to our own growth in professional experience and makeup.

blog 1- teaching with a cultural context

Why do I want to become a teacher?

1. I love teaching and I am really good at it!  I get excited when kids get excited about learning.
2. I know what a difference great teaching and bad teaching can make in a child’s life.  I want to be part of something “good” that happens to a kid.
3. Where else can you go to work and play at the same time?
4. I love figuring out how to reach each child- that’s interesting.
5. I thought about leaving the education field several times for a better paying job (I am a TA- that says it all).  I would become very sad internally at the thought of not doing this type of work.  So, I decided to get my masters’ and certification instead!  Be happy.

5 Critical moments as a student: 

1. Actually, life as a student was never fun for me… until Mr. Sabatini’s 8^th grade social studies class.  Social studies became a series of wonderful stories rather than foreign names and random dates.  He actually taught us how to study for and how to take a test.  This was my first positive classroom experience.

2. My 8^th grade English teacher said that I was a “beacon of light” for others and named me the most improved student of the year.  Once I went home and looked up the term “beacon” I was very pleased.  It goes to show what the support and confidence of a teacher can do for a student.

3. During my senior year at college, a fictional writing professor said that he would not help me with my work and was not there to be my cheerleader (I hadn’t even posed my question to him question at the point he said this)  He failed me on my writing that was worth 55% of my grade.  He showed me how demoralizing a teacher can be.  I, of course, dropped his class.

4. Through out my career as a student, I had been told again and again that I would probably never excel in school.  Gosh, I don’t like to be told ahead of time I will fail!  I am a diagnosed dyslexic with several years of special schooling under my belt.  It took me a while to learn that I really am smart, probably more so than the folks that who tried to steer me away from learning.

5. I had an unbelievably demanding math teacher in high school for two years.  I have thank her mentally ever since!  Good teachers aren’t always the fun ones.

So, looking at my “critical moments” being educated, I realize that they all revolved around teachers- good or bad.  Good teachers in my experience are defined as ones that make the work interesting, help me to connect to the material, teach me beyond the subjects, and most importantly have faith and confidence in me as a student and a child under their care. 

My background:  I was raised in an upper middle class conservative family.  My mother, while incredibly smart (and was actually the first female to ever graduate summa cum laud in the college of Agriculture at Colorado State University-GO MOM!), and had her masters in Animal biology, was a housewife.  However, she really ruled the roost in our house as my father traveled overseas extensively and was often gone for weeks at a time.  College was never an “if”, but a “where” in my house.  As a history major, teaching was a logical choice for me.  However, I distinctly did not want to teach as I felt I would be falling into a “woman’s slot job”.  Now that I am all grown up, I say “the heck with that, I want to be a teacher”.  However, I believe that incorporating research and professional growth into the field of education distinguishes professional educators from job holders. 

My belief system: In spite of my relatively secluded and sheltered childhood, I was raised to believe in the integrity of all people and to respect the choices and lifestyles of people who may not be like me or believe in what I believe in.   As I wrote recently for another class, good teachers must be cognizant of their own biases in order to combat them, or we run the risk of teaching to the biases.

I believe that good teachers are always looking for ways to reach all students academically, behaviorally, and socially.  There is no one set of “best practices” guidelines for each problem.  Therefore, we must try different ways and methods to reach our students.  That is the basis for research. It is an integral part of teaching. Research can be beneficial and ethical if it does not prohibit good teaching practices and methods for any students.  Furthermore, it should be conducted with the goal of bettering the students and school community.  I would love to become a reflective teacher and one that is confident with conducting research to become a master of the craft of teaching.