Action research is a classroom-based or school-based approach to research. It empowers teachers because it is done by teachers for themselves. Teachers are able to study their own classrooms and in doing so are able to better understand them and are able to improve their quality or effectiveness. Action research enables teachers to focus on what they are interested in which gives them the opportunity to engage in personal, professional and educational reflection. For these reasons and so many more, I am thrilled to be a member of the 2018/2019 IBSC Action Research Cohort.
Fifty-four participants from Australia, New Zealand, UK, India, Canada, USA and South Africa make up the 41 research projects in the 2018/2019 IBSC Action Research Cohort. These projects are managed by 4 team advisors. Catherine Steenhoff is my research partner and Trish Cislak is our team advisor. Team Trish is known as "The Long & Short of It".
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| Me, Trish Cislak and Catherine Steenhoff. |
All cohort members were involved in pre-conference tasks before we met at the 2018 IBSC Annual Conference at The Southport School in Australia. The introductory activity involved cohort members uploading a photo and short biography of themselves or their team.
Task One was designed to help cohort members feel more comfortable using the different technologies needed to communicate during the programme. It was called "The Amazing Race" and was a race to see who could finish the tasks first. Tasks included writing a 6 Word Story describing yourself or your team, creating and sharing a Google document, Facebook activities, creating Skype contacts, joining a WhatsApp group, accessing the IBSC Member Centre, reading past Action Research Reports and completing a Google Form. Jacob Geiger, a fellow Team Trish member, won the race.
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| Our 6 Word Story |
Task Two was a theory assignment and involved reading various website pages and the prescribed text, Mertler, C.A. (2017). Action Research: Improving Schools and Empowering Educators (5th Edn). New York: Sage Publishing. It was aimed at strengthening our knowledge as researchers so that we would have a solid understanding of the theory of action research.
Task Three focused on the research topic, Boys and Stories: Pathways to Learning. We had to source two relevant journal articles and write an annotated bibliography on each article making use of APA referencing and following the IBSC Style Guidelines.
Once all these tasks were completed we were ready to meet in Australia for the 2018 IBSC Annual Conference at The Southport School.
