MAMPONG TECHNICAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

SEMESTER I, 2022

Course Code: JBB362

Course Title: Inquiry and Action Research for Junior High Schools

Assignment Number: One(1)

Assignment Title: Action Research

Name of Course Tutor: Mr.Theophilus ANDOH

Name:

Index Number:

Class: Maths/ICT

Signature: …………………………………………………

Submission date: 01/02/2022

 ASSIGNMENT 1

1(a). Discuss five(5) reason why JHS teacher need to conduct action research
in his class.
Action research in education can be defined as the process of studying a school situation to
understand and improve the quality of the educative process (Hensen, 1996; Johnson, 2012;
McTaggart, 1997). Also, action research is known by many other names, including participatory
research, collaborative inquiry, emancipatory research, action learning, and contextual action
research, but all are variations on a theme. Put simply, action research is ‘learning by doing’ - a
group of people identifying a problem, do something to resolve it, see how successful their
efforts were, and if not satisfied try again.

Five reason for conducting action research in JHS class

Action research offers many benefits for educators committed to a critical, investigative process
of improving school practice, policy, or culture. The following are five reasons why a JHS
teacher needs to conduct action research in his classroom;

1. Action research facilitates teacher empowerment (Fueyo & Koorland, 1997).

Teachers are empowered when they are able to collect their own data to use in making decisions
about their schools and classrooms (Book, 1996; Erickson, 1986; Hensen, 1996, Zeichner &
Noff.wwke, 2001). Moreover, when teachers are allowed to take risks and make changes related
to teaching and learning, student achievement is enhanced (Marks & Louis, 1997; Sweetland &
Hoy, 2002), and schools become more effective learning communities (Detert, Louis &
Schroeder, 2001). Therefore, improve teachers with the necessary skills, knowledge, and focus to
engage in meaningful inquiry about their professional practice will enhance this practice, and
effect positive changes concerning the educative goals of the learning community. In exercising
their individual talents, experiences and creative ideas within the classroom, teachers are
empowered to make changes related to teaching and learning.

2. It improve Professional Development of the teacher

Professional development is very vital in the improvement of a teacher craft or teaching practice
and it is significant in improving the learning environment. It focuses on the basic practices that

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are vital in education. It ensures the development of teaching skills, practice as well as
knowledge all of which are very important in the learning process of the JHS class. It also enable
the teacher to ensure effective teaching development. Teachers are meant to believe that they are
performing very important work hence no need to burnout as they act as moral educators.

3. It helps teachers to reflect on what they would like to change in teaching and learning
process;

Reflection can be defined as an out-of-body experience whereby an analysis of the actions is made
and they are viewed in the thinking as well as decision-making context. Teachers therefore need to
use reflection while trying to improve the student’s contextual learning as well as during the
adapting process, the application as well as their evaluation of their knowledge. Action research
enables teachers to reflect on what they would like to change, explore what others are doing in that
field and experiment with practice in a controlled fashion. This practical training support
participants to improving teaching and learning through classroom-based research. The five units
guide participants through two action research cycles to improve outcomes.

4. It helps teachers to design their own meaningful pedagogy:

Practicing the strategies and skills of teacher action research can help aspiring teachers in
designing their own meaningful pedagogy, shift the identity of teacher as expert to one of inquirer,
and make it more difficult to take the dynamics of the classroom for granted (Britzman, 2003, p.
239). For example, a study of beginning teachers, with 1 to 5 years of experience (Campbell,
2004), documented that teachers who learned to do teacher research as part of their preservice
program carried their learning about teacher research into their own classrooms, using data
collection procedures to construct knowledge about teaching, specifically in five categories of
knowledge: knowledge of class- room structure, knowledge of self, knowledge of students,
knowledge of curriculum and instruction, and knowledge of theory.

5. Action research also help teachers to think in relation to reflective practice and the
scholarship of teaching and learning.
Action research helps the teachers in being reflective. Through reflection, they are able to know
whether there past practices or lessons were effective. It enables the researcher to rely on facts
rather than trial and error. Its process of discovery is structured and one has to rely on facts from

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the experiment rather than depending on his/her memory. These facts can be kept for future
reference as well as improvement. The formal steps carried out during the action plan are very
significant especially when the teacher is informing his/her student about the same. The data
collected is usually important. Action research helps the teacher to reflect on his/her teaching
process and enable the student to avoid prejudgments or depending on making guesses.

1(b). State and explain five(5) key principals of action research.

Winter cited in Cohen, Manion and Morrison, (2018 p. 433) outlined five key principles of
action research. These are;

1) Collaborative Resource

Participants in an action research project are co-researchers. The principle of collaborative

resource presupposes that each person’s ideas are equally significant as potential resources for
creating interpretive categories of analysis, negotiated among the participants. It strives to avoid
the skewing of credibility stemming from the prior status of an idea-holder. It especially makes
possible the insights gleaned from noting the contradictions both between many viewpoints and
within a single viewpoint

2) Dialectical critique
Reality, particularly social reality, is consensual validated, which is to say it is shared through
language. Phenomena are conceptualized in dialogue; therefore a dialectical critique is required
to understand the set of relationships both between the phenomenon and its context, and between
the elements constituting the phenomenon. The key elements to focus attention on are those
constituent elements that are unstable, or in opposition to one another. These are the ones that
are most likely to create changes.

3) Creating plural structures

The nature of the research embodies a multiplicity of views, commentaries and critiques, leading
to multiple possible actions and interpretations. This plural structure of inquiry requires a plural
text for reporting. This means that there will be many accounts made explicit, with
commentaries on their contradictions, and a range of options for action presented. A report,

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therefore, acts as a support for ongoing discussion among collaborators, rather than a final
conclusion of fact.

4) Risking disturbance
The change process potentially threatens all previously established ways of doing things, thus
creating psychic fears among the practitioners. One of the more prominent fears comes from the
risk to ego stemming from open discussion of one’s interpretations, ideas, and judgments.
Initiators of action research will use this principle to allay others’ fears and invite participation
by pointing out that they, too, will be subject to the same process, and that whatever the
outcome, learning will take place.

5) Collaborative Resource
Participants in an action research project are co-researchers. The principle of collaborative
resource presupposes that each person’s ideas are equally significant as potential resources for
creating interpretive categories of analysis, negotiated among the participants. It strives to avoid
the skewing of credibility stemming from the prior status of an idea-holder. It especially makes
possible the insights gleaned from noting the contradictions both between many viewpoints and
within a single viewpoint

References;
Hensen, K. T. (1996). Teachers as researchers. In J. Sikula (Ed.), Handbook of research on
teacher education (4th ed., pp. 53-66). New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA

IvyPanda. (2020, March 22). The Importance of Action Research. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-

importance-of-action-research/

Fueyo, V. & Koorland, M.A. (1997). Teacher as researcher: A synonym for professionalism.
Journal of Teacher Education, 48(5), 336-344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487197048005003

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Johnson, A. P. (2012). A short guide to action research (4th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education.
Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (1988). The action research planner. Geelong, Australia: Deakin
University Press.

Chisholm, Rupert, and Max Elden. "Features of Emerging Action Research." Human Relations
46.2 (1993): 275-98.

Comstock, Don, and Sally Fox. "Computer Conferencing in a Learning Community:

Opportunities and Obstacles." November 1995.
http://www.seattleantioch.edu/VirtualAntioch/DRAFT7HT.HTM (14/04/1998).

Elden, Max, and Rupert Chisholm. "Emerging Varieties of Action Research: Introduction to the
Special Issue." Human Relations 46.2 (1993): 121-42.

Emery, Fred E., and Eric L. Trist. "The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments." Human
Relations 18 (1965): 21-32.

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