Action Research Project Idea

I will be doing a action research project. Since my degree is in technology leadership, I'm pursuing ideas in that area.

At the campus level and at least, the classroom level, there is a disproportional emphasis placed on the technology TEKS as compare to Content TEKS. It seems that few teachers know of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology. If they do know of the LRPT, less urgency is placed on the implementation of those TEKS than content TEKS. There are probably several reasons for this, one being that our success on the technology TEKS is not at such high stakes when compared to content TAKS.

Unfortunately many educators are missing valuable opportunities to help their students with content TEKS by deemphasizing or ignoring the technology TEKS. If teachers get a vision for how the technology TEKS support TAKS and enhance instruction, they will begin facilitating the use of technology in their classes. The issues of technology infrastructure reliability and teacher technology training are central; however, the magnitude of these issues cannot be addressed within one action research project.

I'd like to study technology implementation at my school. The STAR Report would be a place to start but an action research project would need to define the understandings that teachers are working with. Our 1 to 1 computers, Classmates are being issued to teachers for use in their classes. Last year they were issued to each student and they were to carry them to their classes and to their home each day. For reasons currently unknown, a very large portion of the students did not meet the expectation. Consequently, many teachers were not able to incorporate Classmate usage into their classes.

With this change, a practical action research project could address this years implementation of the classmates. Through teacher questionnaires, information could be collected pertaining to last years use of the classmates. Many questions could be explored.

How often were the Classmates used in classes last year?
How did teachers use the Classmates last year?
Do teacher know their technology TEKS?
Did last years methods affectively support the technology TEKS?Did last years methods affectively support content TEKS?
With the new format of issuing Classmate class sets to teachers, are they being used more often?
Are the methods being used this year supporting the technology TEKS?
Are the methods being used this year affectively supporting content TEKS?
Is technology in general being used more by the teachers or by the students?
How do the methods being used compare to research pertaining to high affective strategies?
What problems impede teacher and/or student use of technology?

I think that I could provide qualitatively and quantitative data that could be used to measure growth. Is this a reasonable action research study? Is this a meaningful action research study? Could this topic satisfy the requirements of an action research study?

I invite your insight and discussion on this topic.

J. Keith Cummings