In these reviews, you will examine the information in reference to your own future
research. The application you make will highlight how your research will be informed
(influenced) by what you are reviewing. Be as specific as possible, because these
reviews will serve as resources for the writing of your Action Research proposal and
eventually conducting the research.
The purpose of the review is for you to make explicit connections to your future Action
Research Proposal. I want to reviews to not only be venues in which you can improve
your thinking/writing ability, but to also serve the practical purpose of being a help for
your proposal and then eventually the actual study.
Now in particular, as your write up your thoughts on the coding activity talk about what
you thought of it as a data collecting strategy and where it might fit in your field notes,
surveys, video tape analysis, etc. You can also work on your use of references (APA
format style) by using the article I gave you and Johnson's AR book , to reference either
in paraphrasing or direct quotes. I am at home now, but I will send you the citation when
I get in to the office on Monday.
Data Coding- Once you have chosen your research question (which you
were supposed to do a practice run of it for last class
period...remember you did peer review with a classmate last week at the
beginning of class) you will need to pick some data collection
strategies (video tape, field notes, surveys, interviews,etc.) to use
to help provide data that will answer your question. Now if you are
not sure which to use, look at past CEs you have read and the examples
in the AR book by Johnson. So lets say you decide to use as one of the
data collection strategies, interviews, the question before you is how
will you make sense of what your students said in the interviews? You
will use some type of data coding scheme...just like we did in class
last week. That is a connection between what you experience last week
and your future research. You would then explain what that might look
like in your study.
The data coding activity helped me understand many aspects of the action research
project. It underscored the amount of data that will be collected, the various types of data
that will be collected, and how the voluminous data can be downsized, reduced, and
organized.
Explain the need for data coding. Illustrate with example. Add a quip about how we
organized reorganized then changed.
Project Based Learning-student surveys
Paperless-Student surveys
Literacy strategies-connection to science literacy
Read Johnson’s chapter on data coding