Developing a Focus

What else does “problem” mean?

• A problem may mean “a general idea that something might be improved”

Your general idea may stem from

• A promising new idea

• The recognition that existing practice falls short of aspiration.

Where to direct our attention

• What is happening now?

• In what sense is this problematic?

• What can I do about it?

Probable general starting points

• I would like to improve the…• Some people are unhappy about• What can ı do to change the situation?• I am perplexed by…• …is a source of irritation. What can I do about it?• I have an idea. I would like to try out in my class.• How can the experience of…be applied to…?• Just what do I do with respect to…?

What do these ideas relate to?

• Practices on the school’s development plan

• School aims, targets and mission statement.

• Practical and immediate concerns

• an aspect of schema of work

• a troublesome individual or class

Guidelines • Avoid issues that you can not do anything

about.

• Select small-scale and relatively limited issues.

• Choose an issue that is important to you and your students.

• Try to work collaboratively on the focus of your classroom research.

• Make connections between your classroom research work, teaching and learning.

• Viable-discrete-intrinsically interesting-involving collaboration-in relation with teaching, learning and school concerns

Performance Gap

• The research suggests :

• There is often incongruence between a teacher’s publicly declared philosophy or beliefs about education and how s/he behaves in the classroom.

• There is often incongruence between the teacher’s declared goals and objectives and in the way in which the lesson was taught.

• There is often a discrepancy between a teacher’s perceptions or account of lesson and the perceptions of other participants.

It is via the notion of performance gap –a gap between espoused theory and theory in action- by which advocates of action research locate its niche as an appropriate mode of research in schools and classrooms.

Ebbutt’s illustration of performance gap between the curriculum in action and

curriculum as intention

• What did the pupils actually do?

• What were they learning?

• How worthwhile was it?

• What did I do?

• What did I learn?

• What do I intend to do now?

The formulation of research focus

• Open context- teachers’ critical reflection on her teaching.

• Closed context- testing a hypothesis or exploring a specific activity.

• The effects of songs and games on teenage learners’ vocabulary learning.

• The effects of using pictures on essay writing.

• How do I supervise my students at the practice school?

The open approach

• (hypothesis generating)

• Hypothesis or question emerges from a result of critical reflection .

The nature of open approach

• Take a broad area of enquiry

• Carry out the initial enquiry

• Gradually focus the enquiry

The closed approach

• (hypothesis testing)

Hypothesis (or question) is given.

The teacher having refined it proceeds to

the enquiry.

The nature of closed approach

• Take a specific issue

• Derive research questions

• Choose an appropriate methodology

Topics to consider

• Portfolio assessment in writing classes with the first graders of ELT Department.

• The ways primary school teachers use to make students feel secure in the classroom.

• The effects of homework on young learners of English

• The application of newly taught vocabulary items in speaking and writing classes.

• Encouraging shy primary school students in speaking classes.

• How can we use vocabulary teaching techniques more effectively at primary schools?

• The influence of task-based reading activities on university prep-class EFL learners’ attitude toward reading classes.

Formulating hypotheses

• Do we need to formulate hypotheses in all types of classroom research?

• What does hypothesis mean to us?

• There will be a positive relationship between extensive reading and vocabulary learning.

• The students who are taught grammar through games will receive higher scores than the students who are taught grammar through deductive methods.

• Utterances such as “good” , “interesting”, “right” in response to the ideas expressed can prevent the expression and discussion of alternative ideas, since pupils tend to interpret them as attemts to legitimate the development of some ideas rather than others.

Theory and theorising

• A set of assumptions, beliefs and presuppositions that individuals hold.

• Our view of world, our individual construction of reality is at one level essentially theoretical.

• More traditional use of theory refers to a coherent set of which purport to explain, predict and be as a guide to practice.

• In what sense the word “theory” will be more useful in our case?

• Educational theory in the second sense is not at all useful in telling us in a practical way how to behave in the classroom.

• The gap between theory and practice is so large that it prevents any useful connection.

Why ?

Because :

• Theories are not specific enough,

• Propositions they contain are not easily generalised to individual situations.

A third way of theorising

• Theorising approaches theory through practice, in the same way as the hypotheses, assumptions, and constructs we develop from classroom research procedures emerge from data gathered from actual classroom experiences.

• When we are engaged in classroom research, we can be said to br engaged in educational theorising because we are reflecting systematically and critically on our practice.

• Such systematic and critical examination will involve philosophising, appealing to evidence, reference to theories. But there is no reason saying that it will add to a theory. Classroom research is about helping the practitioner to theorise, i.e. Think more systematically, critically, and intelligently about his or her practice.

» Pring (1978)

• Classroom research creates teachers who:

• Stand in control of knowledge rather than being subservient to it.

• They are engaged in the process of theorising and achieving self-knowledge

• The idea of self knowledge refers :• To the internalisation of ideas that empowers the

person• To those moments of clarity and power that

occur when we understand a concept and see how we can use it in our personal or professional lives

• To teachers’ gaining more clarity on their tacid knowledge and incorperate this in their teaching.