Progress on Action Research Project

I feel positive about my progress toward my action research project, which is looking into the need and benefits of a district wide middle school tryout process or policy. I was able to discuss this with several middle school coaches before their season started. The majority of middle school coaches agreed that a common tryout process would be beneficial for our district. I have completed the surveys I would like these middle school coaches to answer. I plan on distributing them within the next couple of weeks. I am currently working on surveys for high school coaches and administrators.

I have also been able to discuss this project and concern with some coaches from other districts. Most of these talks were informal, but provided a lot of good information. I wrote down notes after these conversations and will be sending these coaches surveys soon as well. I was surprised that most districts already have a common tryout procedure for middle schools. This just confirms my belief that our district is in need of one as well.

I will have good information about how our middle schools currently hold volleyball tryouts. I was able to speak with those coaches and even watch a few tryout sessions. The next season I will be able to do this with will be basketball. I’m still interested in discussing this matter more with the high school coaches, so that will be my next big area of research.

I currently have 20 hours of project work complete. Most of these hours consist of creating the surveys and talking with coaches from our district as well as other surrounding districts about their tryout processes.

REVISED Action Research Plan

Revised Action Planning Template
Goal: Evaluate the need for a district wide middle school athletic tryout/cut policy.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1. Identify schools with problems surrounding their tryout/cut policy or lack of.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High School Coaches Copy of cut policy	Survey of coach’s needs/issues
2. Identify schools in the district and outside of the district that have clear, concise tryout/cut policies.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High School coaches in LISD and outside of LISD Copy of cut policies	Survey of coach’s needs/issues
3. Compare and contrast problematic cut policies to concise cut policies.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High school coaches Copies of cut policies Completed surveys from coaches	n/a
4. Interview high school and middle school coaches.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High school coaches Interview questions	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
5. Interview athletic administrators.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Leander ISD Athletic Director/Assistant Athletic Director Campus Athletic Coordinators	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
6. Interview principals at the high school and middle school levels.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Leander ISD Middle School and High School Principals or Assistant Principals	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
7. Analyze data from all interviews to determine the need for a common cut policy.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Data collected throughout research study	n/a
8. Create a PowerPoint presentation to present findings to administrators and coaches	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Data collected throughout research study Computer Access	n/a

Action Plan Template

Benefits of Blogging for Educational Leaders

Educators and educational leaders can benefit from blogging in many ways. Blogging can create an open forum for educators to share lesson ideas, best practices in the classroom, and even get advice from other educators and leaders. The instant feedback blogging provides is invaluable as well. Discussions can be open ended which can provide a huge variety of responses and opinions that can really get educator's creative juices flowing. As an educational leader, it's always refreshing to hear other's ideas or experiences that I could benefit from in my own life.

Action Research

Action research, in education, is taking an active, real life approach to solving problems and improving upon issues or situations in which educators and administrators come upon. You are are active participant when you use action research. With active research, you don't just sit back and study data some stranger has compiled. Active research is about being in the trenches. It's a process that starts with an issue and requires planning, time, experiences, and sometimes even failed attempts before the best solution is found. The key to finding the solution to the inquiry or problem requires reflections on the actions you have taken.

In education, action research is studying the ways in which your school, or you, the administrator works (ex.routines, practices, challenges) and then taking the results of the studies and implementing changes that would benefit the school overall and those that work and learn inside of it. Basically, studying the school and figuring out ways to make it a better place to work and learn. Action research is a combination of both action and research. An administrator will want to research the real life issues in their school and then take the appropriate actions to solve problems or enhance the good things pertenant to the specific school. 

 In general, the practitioner inquiry movement focuses on the concerns of practitioners (not outside researchers) and engages practitioners in the design, data collection, and interpretation of data around their question (Dana, 2009).  Unlike passive observations in traditional educational research, action research focuses on action. It requires the researcher to be actively engaged in inquiries, problem solving, improvement plans, etc. Instead of just reading research and data compiled by an outside source, unrelated to the school environment, action research puts the researcher in those “real life” scenarios and leads to them discovering ways to solve problems, improve classroom practices, and possibly creating a better overall learning environment themselves.