Action Research Professional Learning

Solving Puzzles of Practice

On the first day back this term, teachers spent the afternoon working in their Action Research groups to move forward with their projects with most working on their practice interventions. 

In their quest to develop strategies to respond to their identified ‘puzzle of practice’, teachers engaged in professional reading, further analysis of the baseline data and professional conversations to creativity design strategies that might better respond to the teaching and learning challenges they face.  

With a wealth of experience and expertise amongst the teachers in the room, the peer collaboration activity provided an opportunity for all involved to view and provide feedback on other groups’ ideas (see examples below). From this process, teachers now have a better sense of the various topics their colleagues are working on and will hopefully continue to share ideas across groups and faculties to further add to the success of individual projects.

With a detailed plan of what changes they will make to their practice, teachers will now be using a range of  methods to observe and measure the impact of these changes. Given the reflective nature of this form of research, teachers will be constantly on the lookout for any signs that new strategies are not having the desired effect and will be ready to adjust these strategies accordingly. 

While this will be a busy term of moving through the trial-measure-adjust-measure cycle of continual  improvement, it will be the breakthroughs, professional learning and ultimately the improvements in student outcomes achieved from this process that will make all this effort worthwhile.

Kate Corcoran
Action Research Coordinator