Personal Action Research Plan Essay
Personal Action Research Plan
Racquel Trimmer
Walden University
EDUC-6733A Action Research for Educators
Dr. Tiffany DePriter
January 26, 2014
Collaboration and Your Personal Action Research Plan
Part A: Description of Topic and Students
I have been working in education for the past three years. I have had the opportunity to work in different environments. I have worked with all types of students with disabilities. As a younger child, I always wanted to be an educator because of the desire to help children. I learned that being an educator comes with patience. I work in the largest school district in the city of Houston. This year I decided to step out of my normal classroom duties and work in Special Education. Working …show more content…
in Special Education requires special touch because at all at times the teacher has to be alert. My experience was in mathematics because the learners feared the subject much to the extent that some would get tensed when they heard the word mentioned.
My school district’s goal is to provide the best education that will prepare students for post-secondary achievements. Houston Independence School designed all schools to help, support and provide resources to all students in order to meet the student needs and/or disability. There are educators on campus to provide various types of learning. Houston ISD is known for assisting students to meet their individual special needs.
HISD has systems in place to that aim to establish, assess, and recognize students with disabilities from age of 3 through to 21. The motto at my school for Special Education is to support students with disabilities in gaining college and career readiness skills through active engagement in grade level curriculum. The Office of Special Education Services (OSES) supports disabled to smoothly transition to college, career guidance, and acquisition of an autonomous living proficiency through active commitment in relevant curriculum (Houstonisd.org, 2014). This district strives to make sure that every student has a safe environment. Their goal is to improve and maintain academic achievement. The district is offering more training on and off campus to achieve the highest level of success. Despite the many efforts mathematics has still remained a problem because the learners fear the subject. My wondering question is based on special need students and mathematics. Students seem to run when they hear the word Math or even see numbers. How can I better assist special needs students with Mathematics?
Part B: Review Literature
While conducting research to help me with my wondering, I noticed that there are many ways to help students with special needs with Mathematics.
According to Kroesbergen and Van Luit,”students with difficulties in learning mathematics can be in almost every classroom” (2003, 53). When reviewing literature they all shared some things in common. The teacher must keep reinforcing. We, as the educator, have to keep reinforcing the simple Mathematical skills, such as counting, adding and subtracting. Students with disabilities are going to need individual attention to sufficiently tackle the effect of disabilities (Hardy, 2005). Readings show that there are a significant number of students who struggle with problem solving. Hardy’s research shows that difficult math learning issues in special needs students stem from memory, attention and processing difficulties. Those are a few things that make it hard for the students. During the research, I noticed that the curriculum and what the state require students to know is an issue. Special Education teachers are required to teach students with all different disabilities and it can be very hard to follow the curriculum by the book. In Kang’s research, he stated that mathematics is viewed as a cognitively demanding subject (2010). All the articles tell the readers that the teacher has to differentiate lessons depending on the students’ learning needs. Sometimes that includes going into extra details and being repetitive. Translate the words into an equation in picture form (Hardy, 2005). Researchers studied that when teaching special need student mathematics, there must be consistency of practices. This is at school and at home. Teachers are to team up with the parents to make sure that this is done. Presenting or displaying math in small increments can help. There has to be modifications based on the disability. I have learned to incorporate pictures and do more hands on lessons. In my classroom we use manipulatives, such as
counters and calculators.
After doing the research, I have learned that when it comes to dealing with students with special needs, the teacher has to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the student. One can try different a different approach with every student. One technique may not work for all students. The findings show different methods in order to better assist the student with Mathematics. Working in groups is not always effective when it comes to students with special needs. Peer assistance can help, but these students need more assistance from the teacher. Learning challenges vary from minute to extreme and this may be permanent or in the short term. Generally, students have deficits in memory, learning problems while applying educational strategies. They also find difficulty in application of what they already know to new responsibilities (Kroesbergen &Van Luit, 2003).
The articles that address this issue were very current. The authors took time to do research and collect data to help struggling teachers like myself. They all were very helpful in moving forward to better assist my students. They also gave different recommendations to will be every useful in the classroom.
Part C: Wondering Questions
My wondering is how can I better assist special needs students with Mathematics? I know that students back away from this subject. I have noticed that even special education students do not like Mathematics. It is very challenging but I believe practice makes from. In a recent PLC, this was a discussion (Yang, 2010). We came up with ways to try and approach this issue at hand. My colleagues gave insight and feedback to help. Fearing Mathematics is a real-life dilemma that teachers struggle to solve daily. We, as teacher, are not always the best math teachers but we have resources to make ourselves better so we can make the students better. As a department, we are all doing research to see how we can make Mathematics easier. While in the classroom with the students, I notice and take notes as to what I notice in my students. Intervention is something that is needed to help complete the research for my wondering. I will have to make drastic changes in my instruction strategies. This can include but is not limited to making simple changes to the curriculum. I will have to set more realistic goals. The goals that are set for the students are a little outrageous (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). I will incorporate real life stories, if needed. Computer based activities and instruction can be used if needed. This promotes interactive learning and there are programs that can track the student progress. I then question, how soon will I see a change? How will the student adapt to the change? I plan to improve learning by attending PLC and additional trainings offered by the school district.
Part D: Collaboration with colleagues
Considering that mathematics is all about problem solving, I will consider collaboration with my fellow teachers. This will be both directly and indirectly. I will involve them directly by getting their ideas on issues that are challenging for instance, the varied techniques that can work out effectively in teaching a given chapter. This will be crucial because it will increase my knowledge and I will have different techniques to use so that the different kind of learners can be in a position to benefit from one of the techniques. I will also collaborate with them in research which will be indirectly. I will be doing my own research for instance comparing different mathematics teaching resources and then involving them in the discussion to find out the best teaching resources (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). There will not be bias in this because even language teachers can help because language still plays a key role in mathematics teaching.
Part E: Data collection
In order to gain insights into my wondering I will need to collect data. The data collection will not be limited to books and other resources since the learners will also be involved in this. The main method of data collection that I will consider is reporting. The reporting will be done by the learners. I will select a sample of five learners of different ranks according to performance who will have to report after every lesson. The reporting will be based on set questions for instance, “the extent to which they have understood and the effectiveness of the technique used.” At the end of each topic they will also do some reporting. All this data will be well managed and compared between the top performers and the poor performers (Hardy, 2005). This is what scholars have termed as post harvest whereby the outcomes of something are presented. It is a good method of data collection because the data got is first hand.
The second method of data collection that I will consider is document review. This will mean collecting data from secondary sources that have already being published. It is a good method of data collection because it will provide wide data considering that mathematics is one of the educational problems that scholars have broadly written about. I will use online books as well as printed books and get the varied techniques in mathematics teaching that have been discussed. I will analyze the data properly so that I gain more skills to use in teaching.
The last method of data collection that I will use is critical analysis. This will be from both the learners and my colleagues. The critical analysis will mean reading between the lines in every mathematics related context. In the classroom I will observe the behavior of learners in the progress of a lesson and note down what I notice (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). I will critically analyze this to come up with data. In areas where I will be discussing with my colleagues about the different issues in teaching mathematics I will be taking the important notes. I will summarize this to come up with reliable data.
Part F: Data analysis
Data analysis is very crucial because it is from this that conclusions on a research question or issue will be made. There are various methods of data analysis that I will consider with the most important one being significance (Hardy, 2005). This will mean looking at the relevance of the collected data to the issue under study and finding out its significance. This kind of data analysis will be applied on the data collected from the documents because they are likely to cover different issues some of which may not be significant. The data will be categorized such that we have the most and significant and less significant data.
I will also consider quantification of data whereby I will gather data according to the number supporting it (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). For instance, the data that I will get from the learners I will quantify it such that the views that are supported by many are put into more consideration. The data which is supported by many is likely to be more credible and will be of much significance in making conclusions.
The last thing that I will consider is the time of data collection or publication of secondary resources. This will be used for the data collected through document review. Research in mathematics is increasing on a daily basis with new techniques being developed. The newly published resources have better information because they have even considered the use of technology in teaching mathematics (Yang, 2010). The data from these sources will be more valued and will play a critical role in making the final conclusions and recommendations.
The data that does not match with any other source will be incredible. Data match will be considered as a way of ensuring that some data is credible (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). The data that will be gathered through critical analysis will be analyzed through comparison with other sources. This will mean comparing secondary and primary data.
Part G: Data sharing with colleagues
After making my conclusions and recommendations on how to help learners with disabilities with mathematics, I will need to share this with my fellow teachers. I will do this in a systematic manner whereby we will come into a discussion with colleagues from the mathematics department (Yang, 2010). I will explain what I have done and my core aims of doing this. This will be a form of presentation whereby I will present the data to all the teachers from the department. After this we will develop an implementation plan so that we can evaluate the outcomes of the research. This will be done by grouping the learners into categories of equal abilities. One group will act as a control while the other will be used to do evaluation of the research results. We will set a duration after which we will collect data to see how the techniques have fared (Hardy, 2005). It is through this that my research will make significance and I will have shared it with my fellow teachers.
At district level, I will also consider a presentation when all the special education teachers are present. This will be crucial since I will allow criticism and enhance and open discussion so that at the end of the day we have a common and unique approach to helping learners with disabilities. If the outcomes prove effective in helping special education learners with mathematics, I will publish an article that will be spread across the county so that it can help other teachers (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). This will have helped many special education learners so that performance in mathematics improves not only in our school, but also in other schools. It will also be a good way of enhancing future research in the topic because researchers must have a source of data which is normally provided in the literature review or a background to a problem so as to identify gaps for study.
Part H: Timeline for implementation
Week 1: in the first week I will collect data using the three methods; critical analysis, document review, and reporting. I will also manage the data by putting together and in a sequential manner for instance, putting the documents in a chronological manner. In the first two days I will collect data from secondary sources so that I can have some hint on the topic under study. It is from these that I will use the following three days to gather data from the learners and colleagues using critical analysis and reporting.
Week 2: The second week will be set for data analysis. This will begin by putting the data together and quantifying it. The methods of data analysis explained will be put into use. The analysis will lead to development of findings. The findings will be linked with the data in the literature review and recommendations and conclusions drawn.
Week 3: The third week will be made for presentation to colleagues in the mathematics department. I will also open up a forum for discussion so that more content can be added. Within the same I will present the data to mathematics and science teachers in a meeting of all schools in the district. It is through this that I will get an approval from the administrators in the district.
Week 4: This will be the last week whereby I will put the data in soft copy for publishing. I will send it to a publisher so that it is printed and spread. This will mean that it will be available to many mathematics teachers. It will also open up for more research in the issue considering that research is built on some data that already exists. When the data is analyzed gaps are identified and research is continued so that better techniques of teaching learners with special needs are developed. This will lead to better performance in mathematics.
References
Hardy, S. (2005). Research-Based Math Interventions for Middle School Students with Disabilities. New York: McMillan
Kang, Y. (2010) "Self-regulatory training for helping students with special needs to learn mathematics." PhD diss., University of Iowa. Retrieved from http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/688.
Kroesbergen, E. H., & Van Luit, J. E. (2003). Mathematics Interventions for Children with Special Educational Needs: A Meta-Analysis. Remedial and Special Education, 24(2): 97-114.
Racquel Trimmer
Walden University
EDUC-6733A Action Research for Educators
Dr. Tiffany DePriter
January 26, 2014
Collaboration and Your Personal Action Research Plan
Part A: Description of Topic and Students
I have been working in education for the past three years. I have had the opportunity to work in different environments. I have worked with all types of students with disabilities. As a younger child, I always wanted to be an educator because of the desire to help children. I learned that being an educator comes with patience. I work in the largest school district in the city of Houston. This year I decided to step out of my normal classroom duties and work in Special Education. Working …show more content…
in Special Education requires special touch because at all at times the teacher has to be alert. My experience was in mathematics because the learners feared the subject much to the extent that some would get tensed when they heard the word mentioned.
My school district’s goal is to provide the best education that will prepare students for post-secondary achievements. Houston Independence School designed all schools to help, support and provide resources to all students in order to meet the student needs and/or disability. There are educators on campus to provide various types of learning. Houston ISD is known for assisting students to meet their individual special needs.
HISD has systems in place to that aim to establish, assess, and recognize students with disabilities from age of 3 through to 21. The motto at my school for Special Education is to support students with disabilities in gaining college and career readiness skills through active engagement in grade level curriculum. The Office of Special Education Services (OSES) supports disabled to smoothly transition to college, career guidance, and acquisition of an autonomous living proficiency through active commitment in relevant curriculum (Houstonisd.org, 2014). This district strives to make sure that every student has a safe environment. Their goal is to improve and maintain academic achievement. The district is offering more training on and off campus to achieve the highest level of success. Despite the many efforts mathematics has still remained a problem because the learners fear the subject. My wondering question is based on special need students and mathematics. Students seem to run when they hear the word Math or even see numbers. How can I better assist special needs students with Mathematics?
Part B: Review Literature
While conducting research to help me with my wondering, I noticed that there are many ways to help students with special needs with Mathematics.
According to Kroesbergen and Van Luit,”students with difficulties in learning mathematics can be in almost every classroom” (2003, 53). When reviewing literature they all shared some things in common. The teacher must keep reinforcing. We, as the educator, have to keep reinforcing the simple Mathematical skills, such as counting, adding and subtracting. Students with disabilities are going to need individual attention to sufficiently tackle the effect of disabilities (Hardy, 2005). Readings show that there are a significant number of students who struggle with problem solving. Hardy’s research shows that difficult math learning issues in special needs students stem from memory, attention and processing difficulties. Those are a few things that make it hard for the students. During the research, I noticed that the curriculum and what the state require students to know is an issue. Special Education teachers are required to teach students with all different disabilities and it can be very hard to follow the curriculum by the book. In Kang’s research, he stated that mathematics is viewed as a cognitively demanding subject (2010). All the articles tell the readers that the teacher has to differentiate lessons depending on the students’ learning needs. Sometimes that includes going into extra details and being repetitive. Translate the words into an equation in picture form (Hardy, 2005). Researchers studied that when teaching special need student mathematics, there must be consistency of practices. This is at school and at home. Teachers are to team up with the parents to make sure that this is done. Presenting or displaying math in small increments can help. There has to be modifications based on the disability. I have learned to incorporate pictures and do more hands on lessons. In my classroom we use manipulatives, such as
counters and calculators.
After doing the research, I have learned that when it comes to dealing with students with special needs, the teacher has to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the student. One can try different a different approach with every student. One technique may not work for all students. The findings show different methods in order to better assist the student with Mathematics. Working in groups is not always effective when it comes to students with special needs. Peer assistance can help, but these students need more assistance from the teacher. Learning challenges vary from minute to extreme and this may be permanent or in the short term. Generally, students have deficits in memory, learning problems while applying educational strategies. They also find difficulty in application of what they already know to new responsibilities (Kroesbergen &Van Luit, 2003).
The articles that address this issue were very current. The authors took time to do research and collect data to help struggling teachers like myself. They all were very helpful in moving forward to better assist my students. They also gave different recommendations to will be every useful in the classroom.
Part C: Wondering Questions
My wondering is how can I better assist special needs students with Mathematics? I know that students back away from this subject. I have noticed that even special education students do not like Mathematics. It is very challenging but I believe practice makes from. In a recent PLC, this was a discussion (Yang, 2010). We came up with ways to try and approach this issue at hand. My colleagues gave insight and feedback to help. Fearing Mathematics is a real-life dilemma that teachers struggle to solve daily. We, as teacher, are not always the best math teachers but we have resources to make ourselves better so we can make the students better. As a department, we are all doing research to see how we can make Mathematics easier. While in the classroom with the students, I notice and take notes as to what I notice in my students. Intervention is something that is needed to help complete the research for my wondering. I will have to make drastic changes in my instruction strategies. This can include but is not limited to making simple changes to the curriculum. I will have to set more realistic goals. The goals that are set for the students are a little outrageous (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). I will incorporate real life stories, if needed. Computer based activities and instruction can be used if needed. This promotes interactive learning and there are programs that can track the student progress. I then question, how soon will I see a change? How will the student adapt to the change? I plan to improve learning by attending PLC and additional trainings offered by the school district.
Part D: Collaboration with colleagues
Considering that mathematics is all about problem solving, I will consider collaboration with my fellow teachers. This will be both directly and indirectly. I will involve them directly by getting their ideas on issues that are challenging for instance, the varied techniques that can work out effectively in teaching a given chapter. This will be crucial because it will increase my knowledge and I will have different techniques to use so that the different kind of learners can be in a position to benefit from one of the techniques. I will also collaborate with them in research which will be indirectly. I will be doing my own research for instance comparing different mathematics teaching resources and then involving them in the discussion to find out the best teaching resources (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). There will not be bias in this because even language teachers can help because language still plays a key role in mathematics teaching.
Part E: Data collection
In order to gain insights into my wondering I will need to collect data. The data collection will not be limited to books and other resources since the learners will also be involved in this. The main method of data collection that I will consider is reporting. The reporting will be done by the learners. I will select a sample of five learners of different ranks according to performance who will have to report after every lesson. The reporting will be based on set questions for instance, “the extent to which they have understood and the effectiveness of the technique used.” At the end of each topic they will also do some reporting. All this data will be well managed and compared between the top performers and the poor performers (Hardy, 2005). This is what scholars have termed as post harvest whereby the outcomes of something are presented. It is a good method of data collection because the data got is first hand.
The second method of data collection that I will consider is document review. This will mean collecting data from secondary sources that have already being published. It is a good method of data collection because it will provide wide data considering that mathematics is one of the educational problems that scholars have broadly written about. I will use online books as well as printed books and get the varied techniques in mathematics teaching that have been discussed. I will analyze the data properly so that I gain more skills to use in teaching.
The last method of data collection that I will use is critical analysis. This will be from both the learners and my colleagues. The critical analysis will mean reading between the lines in every mathematics related context. In the classroom I will observe the behavior of learners in the progress of a lesson and note down what I notice (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). I will critically analyze this to come up with data. In areas where I will be discussing with my colleagues about the different issues in teaching mathematics I will be taking the important notes. I will summarize this to come up with reliable data.
Part F: Data analysis
Data analysis is very crucial because it is from this that conclusions on a research question or issue will be made. There are various methods of data analysis that I will consider with the most important one being significance (Hardy, 2005). This will mean looking at the relevance of the collected data to the issue under study and finding out its significance. This kind of data analysis will be applied on the data collected from the documents because they are likely to cover different issues some of which may not be significant. The data will be categorized such that we have the most and significant and less significant data.
I will also consider quantification of data whereby I will gather data according to the number supporting it (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). For instance, the data that I will get from the learners I will quantify it such that the views that are supported by many are put into more consideration. The data which is supported by many is likely to be more credible and will be of much significance in making conclusions.
The last thing that I will consider is the time of data collection or publication of secondary resources. This will be used for the data collected through document review. Research in mathematics is increasing on a daily basis with new techniques being developed. The newly published resources have better information because they have even considered the use of technology in teaching mathematics (Yang, 2010). The data from these sources will be more valued and will play a critical role in making the final conclusions and recommendations.
The data that does not match with any other source will be incredible. Data match will be considered as a way of ensuring that some data is credible (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). The data that will be gathered through critical analysis will be analyzed through comparison with other sources. This will mean comparing secondary and primary data.
Part G: Data sharing with colleagues
After making my conclusions and recommendations on how to help learners with disabilities with mathematics, I will need to share this with my fellow teachers. I will do this in a systematic manner whereby we will come into a discussion with colleagues from the mathematics department (Yang, 2010). I will explain what I have done and my core aims of doing this. This will be a form of presentation whereby I will present the data to all the teachers from the department. After this we will develop an implementation plan so that we can evaluate the outcomes of the research. This will be done by grouping the learners into categories of equal abilities. One group will act as a control while the other will be used to do evaluation of the research results. We will set a duration after which we will collect data to see how the techniques have fared (Hardy, 2005). It is through this that my research will make significance and I will have shared it with my fellow teachers.
At district level, I will also consider a presentation when all the special education teachers are present. This will be crucial since I will allow criticism and enhance and open discussion so that at the end of the day we have a common and unique approach to helping learners with disabilities. If the outcomes prove effective in helping special education learners with mathematics, I will publish an article that will be spread across the county so that it can help other teachers (Kroesbergen & Van Luit, 2003). This will have helped many special education learners so that performance in mathematics improves not only in our school, but also in other schools. It will also be a good way of enhancing future research in the topic because researchers must have a source of data which is normally provided in the literature review or a background to a problem so as to identify gaps for study.
Part H: Timeline for implementation
Week 1: in the first week I will collect data using the three methods; critical analysis, document review, and reporting. I will also manage the data by putting together and in a sequential manner for instance, putting the documents in a chronological manner. In the first two days I will collect data from secondary sources so that I can have some hint on the topic under study. It is from these that I will use the following three days to gather data from the learners and colleagues using critical analysis and reporting.
Week 2: The second week will be set for data analysis. This will begin by putting the data together and quantifying it. The methods of data analysis explained will be put into use. The analysis will lead to development of findings. The findings will be linked with the data in the literature review and recommendations and conclusions drawn.
Week 3: The third week will be made for presentation to colleagues in the mathematics department. I will also open up a forum for discussion so that more content can be added. Within the same I will present the data to mathematics and science teachers in a meeting of all schools in the district. It is through this that I will get an approval from the administrators in the district.
Week 4: This will be the last week whereby I will put the data in soft copy for publishing. I will send it to a publisher so that it is printed and spread. This will mean that it will be available to many mathematics teachers. It will also open up for more research in the issue considering that research is built on some data that already exists. When the data is analyzed gaps are identified and research is continued so that better techniques of teaching learners with special needs are developed. This will lead to better performance in mathematics.
References
Hardy, S. (2005). Research-Based Math Interventions for Middle School Students with Disabilities. New York: McMillan
Kang, Y. (2010) "Self-regulatory training for helping students with special needs to learn mathematics." PhD diss., University of Iowa. Retrieved from http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/688.
Kroesbergen, E. H., & Van Luit, J. E. (2003). Mathematics Interventions for Children with Special Educational Needs: A Meta-Analysis. Remedial and Special Education, 24(2): 97-114.