Review #3 Lee1/6Miha LeeProfessor RivasSED 60011 April 2007Reflection on Action Research PresentationsAlthough I took a credential course in a college of education, those theories andapplications in literature I had learned offered me little in the way of keeping mystudents engaged or gauging how many of my lessons led to serious learningbecause at that time I didn’t realized their meaning and importance in my futureteaching. However, my attitude changed when I have accumulated teachingexperiences in high schools. I wanted to know more about the effective teachingand learning process. This is the main reason for taking this course, but I still feelthe need to apply my learning to my teaching to test the usefulness of thosetheories. Action research provides an opportunity to implement my learning into myteaching practice. In addition, action research gives me a chance to reflect on myown practices and the proficiencies of my students with an eye toward what worksand what doesn’t. (Ferrance, 2000) Thus, action research contributes to thedevelopment of my knowledge and skills about teaching and learning. On the other hand, isolation is one of the downsides of teaching. Teachers areoften the sole adult in a room of children, and have little or no time scheduled forprofessional conversations with others. (Johnson, 2007) However, one of the basicprinciples of action research is that researcher need others’ ideas for stimulationand depend on other people’s perspectives to enrich one’s own. (Ferrance, 2000) Inthis sense, the presentations that were made and will be made in our course allowus to learn from watching other people’s experiences and share my experience withother teachers. The presentations offered me an insight into my own actionresearch and helped me to organize my research project.The most interesting thing in the presentations was the research topics that thepeople chose: metacognition, web-based homework, and the nature of science.Those topics made me think about the purpose of doing action research. Obviously,action research is used as a professional development. However, as a ‘science’teacher, I need to focus my research on the effective way of ‘science’ teaching andlearning process. Every teacher has a problem of improving one’s teaching practice,Review #3 Lee2/6but particularly these days when students tend to avoid taking science courses, therole of science teachers is critical in motivating their students to want to know moreabout science and helping their students build understanding of science knowledge.Therefore, I need to choose a topic with regard to the improvement in scienceeducation. What is more, another purpose of action research is to bridge the gapbetween theory and practice. (Johnson, 2007, p32-33) Action research helps me putsome of my learning to the test. The topics of the presentations were from theirlearning in the same program as I have been taking, and suggested a way to usethose topics in my teaching. Thus, the presentations were a valuable chance tolearn about the methods of science education as well as action research. For my action research topic, I already decided ‘guided inquiry as a teachingstrategy’. My interest has been in the effective method of teaching chemistry since Ibecame a chemistry teacher. Chemistry deals with microscopic world to explain themacroscopic phenomena, which cause students to have difficulty learningchemistry. I really want to help my students understand the concepts of chemistryby using effective ways of teaching chemistry. During the course, I have found thatthe constructivism and the inquiry-based teaching help teaching and learningprocess effectively take place in a science classroom. Thus, I will make a plan to testthese theories in my practice, and this action research process also will enable meto improve my teaching skills.When planning action research, it is vital to review literature of professionalresearchers. The purpose of the review is to set a research topic in a theoreticalcontext and to lend credibility to a research design. (Johnson, 2007, p.75, 77)Finding and reading research articles that are relevant to my research topic canbring a new perspective and experience into my work. While academic research isseen as disconnected from the our daily lives, it can be very helpful for teachers topick up ideas suggested in authentic Journal articles, and incorporate them into ourown classroom. (Ferrance, 2000) I don’ think those presenters began the designs oftheir researches from the scratch. They gave us the lists of their literature reviewed,that is, theoretical frameworks. Lyle provided us with literature review in detailabout the importance of homework, acceptance of web-based applications ineducation and the use of web-based homework delivery and submissionapplications. The presence of literature review in his presentations helped us tounderstand the purposes of those researches and helped legitimize those works.Especially, it was impressive that Schus offered the list of reviewed literature withReview #3 Lee3/6clarifying the sources. I may read many articles and find some of them areinteresting and useful for my action research. However, I need to classify thearticles to each of themes in my research topic.Personally, the most difficult step in action research is to design the actions ortools that are used in the research because this step requires creativity ofresearchers. Schus’ idea of using objectives list as a tool to develop metacognitiveskills was the best part of his research. When he showed a sample of the objectiveslist and a completed list with his data collecting method, I learned that I shouldfigure out my own research tools. Also, Kipfel’s techniques, which were used toexplicitly teach the nature of science, were unique. However, Lyle’s