Overall Reflections
Over the past four months, the process of designing, implementing, and reflecting on an action research project has been something completely different than I had ever expected it to be. I have learned an enormous amount of invaluable skills that I will carry with me as a teacher, a researcher, a student for the years to come. This painful struggles and the moments of elation will not be easily forgotten, as I truly believe this study will stay with me for a very, very long time.
The most valuable lesson I learned was that you must trust in yourself and trust in the process. When I began this journey I was apprehensive at my ability to create and conduct a successful research project. When I say successful, I do not necessarily mean that I received my intended results. Instead, I mean a successful research project in that it taught me valuable lessons and created a heightened awareness of not only the world of research, but also the world we live in. I did not know what I was passionate about and I was terrified that I would get to the end of my study and have mundane feelings toward what I had just accomplished. I had many professors tell me as I started the research process that soon enough I would have develop strong emotions toward my study. Although I understood what they were saying, I was not sure I believed them. That completely changed when I identified the need within my students and began researching the literature surrounding it. The more I delved into EIL, the more passionate I became about what I read. The more I read the more I continued to read. The more I continued to read the more ideas I started to have. The more ideas I started to have, the more my study began to take shape. I found myself visualizing my students while designing the phases and becoming increasingly more excited about what the data would show me. The project transformed from something I had to do to graduate from school, to something I wanted to continue pursuing after graduating. If I have the opportunity to talk to students who are about to conduct their own action research, I would give them this one piece of advice: research what you are passionate about and if you do not know what you are passionate about, keep looking. It may find you.
When I began my study I was aware of the limitations and tried my best to combat them when I could. The first limitation my study had was the fact that I was the researcher as well as my students' teacher. For some students, I had been their teacher for months. I predicted this to be a significant limitation in my study, as I assumed that my dual role would produce biases within the data. To try to defuse this, I repeatedly explained how important it was for my research that the students do not answer based on what they thought I wanted to hear. Although I am unsure of whether or not that helped, I also triangulated the data from the different assessment tools so that I would be able to verify the results of the findings. Also, the interviews I conducted proved to be beneficial, as I was able to gain further insight into some of the quantitative data I was collecting and confirm that the patterns I was seeing existed. The second limitation to my study was the amount of participants. To have more verifiable findings, I would have liked my participant pool to be much larger than twenty students. However, due to class-size and access to students in an academic context such as the one I was in, I was unable to include more members. The third limitation of my study was the academic expectations my school had for my students and my classes. My interventions took up significant class time and in order to move up to the next level, my students have to pass a comprehensive English test at the end of every six weeks. Although none of the students objected to the interventions being done during class, I was nervous that their scores would reflect the lack of information that had been taught to them. Upon assessment of their tests, I was unable to determine whether or not conducting my research during class time had any effect on their scores. If I were to do this study again, I would conduct it with an increased amount of participants, who were there voluntarily without any connection to me, and in a setting I could have more control over.
Looking back at what I would do differently, I am able to see the transformation I have made over the past few months. I can see plainly that my transformation started slowly and then happened all at once. This can be contributed to enthusiasm, and perhaps a misdirected approach to research. When I realized how passionate I was about EIL and my study, the fact that my skills as a researcher were in the beginning parts of development were not my primary focus. Instead, I my attention was on how my students were reacting to the study, what my phases were telling me, what assessment tools were the most beneficial, and how to begin planning for the next step. I was always looking toward the next step: the next activity, the next reflection, the finding. However, what I was missing were some key research fundamentals every new researcher should be focused on: presentation of data, organization of data, and selection of data. These did not present themselves to me as issues until the day of my project. Four months had gone by and I had not been aware that my thought process had been anything but acceptable. Contradictorily, I had agonized over how to present my data and was proud of myself for being able to transfer my findings into presentable charts and tables. I am a right-brained person, and the scientific analysis and presentation of data was not something I was familiar with, or able to do with ease. Retrospectively, I should have asked for help earlier on instead of assuming what I was doing was correct. The force of the gaps in my knowledge hit me head once I realized that I had organized and presented my findings, for all three phases, in a way that is not usually acceptable as a researcher. For me, organizing my findings in a linear sense was natural. I thought that it was logical to start with the first activity, assess the first assessment tool, analyze it, record the findings, and move onto the next one. When I happened to mention this to my professor on the night before my research was due I knew from her reaction that my careful linear organization was not what had been expected of me.
The result of this realization put me into a panic and I spent the rest of that night, and the following day, trying to redo weeks of preparation. I completed the thematic organization of my findings from my first phase and realized there was not enough time to complete the rest of my action research project in time. After discussions with a few different professors and peers, I began to change my perspective. What I had been seeing as an overwhelmingly negative situation should actually be viewed as a positive learning experience instead. I am a beginning researcher, and I am bound to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn and how we grow. If my significant transformation was supposed to come at the end of my research, then so be it. I would rather make large mistakes and learn from them, then have an uninterrupted study where my learning was minimal. With this newfound perspective, I began to see the story of my research in a new, clear way. The organizational benefits of analyzing data and categorizing it by theme made complete sense to me. Looking back through my own findings I realized that although they are detailed and precise, many of the connections they have to each other, the implications they hold, and the influence they have over the subsequent portions of my project were lost. This moment, out of every other moment throughout this action research project, was the most humbling and powerful learning experience I have ever had. Although I did not have time to reorganize all of my data, you can view my process below. I hope, that upon comparison of these findings and the original findings I presented in my action research project, the value and enormity of the lessons and transformation I have acquired is as clear to you as it is to me.
The most valuable lesson I learned was that you must trust in yourself and trust in the process. When I began this journey I was apprehensive at my ability to create and conduct a successful research project. When I say successful, I do not necessarily mean that I received my intended results. Instead, I mean a successful research project in that it taught me valuable lessons and created a heightened awareness of not only the world of research, but also the world we live in. I did not know what I was passionate about and I was terrified that I would get to the end of my study and have mundane feelings toward what I had just accomplished. I had many professors tell me as I started the research process that soon enough I would have develop strong emotions toward my study. Although I understood what they were saying, I was not sure I believed them. That completely changed when I identified the need within my students and began researching the literature surrounding it. The more I delved into EIL, the more passionate I became about what I read. The more I read the more I continued to read. The more I continued to read the more ideas I started to have. The more ideas I started to have, the more my study began to take shape. I found myself visualizing my students while designing the phases and becoming increasingly more excited about what the data would show me. The project transformed from something I had to do to graduate from school, to something I wanted to continue pursuing after graduating. If I have the opportunity to talk to students who are about to conduct their own action research, I would give them this one piece of advice: research what you are passionate about and if you do not know what you are passionate about, keep looking. It may find you.
When I began my study I was aware of the limitations and tried my best to combat them when I could. The first limitation my study had was the fact that I was the researcher as well as my students' teacher. For some students, I had been their teacher for months. I predicted this to be a significant limitation in my study, as I assumed that my dual role would produce biases within the data. To try to defuse this, I repeatedly explained how important it was for my research that the students do not answer based on what they thought I wanted to hear. Although I am unsure of whether or not that helped, I also triangulated the data from the different assessment tools so that I would be able to verify the results of the findings. Also, the interviews I conducted proved to be beneficial, as I was able to gain further insight into some of the quantitative data I was collecting and confirm that the patterns I was seeing existed. The second limitation to my study was the amount of participants. To have more verifiable findings, I would have liked my participant pool to be much larger than twenty students. However, due to class-size and access to students in an academic context such as the one I was in, I was unable to include more members. The third limitation of my study was the academic expectations my school had for my students and my classes. My interventions took up significant class time and in order to move up to the next level, my students have to pass a comprehensive English test at the end of every six weeks. Although none of the students objected to the interventions being done during class, I was nervous that their scores would reflect the lack of information that had been taught to them. Upon assessment of their tests, I was unable to determine whether or not conducting my research during class time had any effect on their scores. If I were to do this study again, I would conduct it with an increased amount of participants, who were there voluntarily without any connection to me, and in a setting I could have more control over.
Looking back at what I would do differently, I am able to see the transformation I have made over the past few months. I can see plainly that my transformation started slowly and then happened all at once. This can be contributed to enthusiasm, and perhaps a misdirected approach to research. When I realized how passionate I was about EIL and my study, the fact that my skills as a researcher were in the beginning parts of development were not my primary focus. Instead, I my attention was on how my students were reacting to the study, what my phases were telling me, what assessment tools were the most beneficial, and how to begin planning for the next step. I was always looking toward the next step: the next activity, the next reflection, the finding. However, what I was missing were some key research fundamentals every new researcher should be focused on: presentation of data, organization of data, and selection of data. These did not present themselves to me as issues until the day of my project. Four months had gone by and I had not been aware that my thought process had been anything but acceptable. Contradictorily, I had agonized over how to present my data and was proud of myself for being able to transfer my findings into presentable charts and tables. I am a right-brained person, and the scientific analysis and presentation of data was not something I was familiar with, or able to do with ease. Retrospectively, I should have asked for help earlier on instead of assuming what I was doing was correct. The force of the gaps in my knowledge hit me head once I realized that I had organized and presented my findings, for all three phases, in a way that is not usually acceptable as a researcher. For me, organizing my findings in a linear sense was natural. I thought that it was logical to start with the first activity, assess the first assessment tool, analyze it, record the findings, and move onto the next one. When I happened to mention this to my professor on the night before my research was due I knew from her reaction that my careful linear organization was not what had been expected of me.
The result of this realization put me into a panic and I spent the rest of that night, and the following day, trying to redo weeks of preparation. I completed the thematic organization of my findings from my first phase and realized there was not enough time to complete the rest of my action research project in time. After discussions with a few different professors and peers, I began to change my perspective. What I had been seeing as an overwhelmingly negative situation should actually be viewed as a positive learning experience instead. I am a beginning researcher, and I am bound to make mistakes. Mistakes are how we learn and how we grow. If my significant transformation was supposed to come at the end of my research, then so be it. I would rather make large mistakes and learn from them, then have an uninterrupted study where my learning was minimal. With this newfound perspective, I began to see the story of my research in a new, clear way. The organizational benefits of analyzing data and categorizing it by theme made complete sense to me. Looking back through my own findings I realized that although they are detailed and precise, many of the connections they have to each other, the implications they hold, and the influence they have over the subsequent portions of my project were lost. This moment, out of every other moment throughout this action research project, was the most humbling and powerful learning experience I have ever had. Although I did not have time to reorganize all of my data, you can view my process below. I hope, that upon comparison of these findings and the original findings I presented in my action research project, the value and enormity of the lessons and transformation I have acquired is as clear to you as it is to me.