Friday, May 22, 2009

Tugasan 1 : Ulasan Buku

Book Title : Action Research for Educational Change
Author : John Elliott
Publisher : Open University Press



Example of small action research conducted by the author:


Conducting an action research where they have debated whether students were able at age of 14 years old to reflect meaningfully about adult experience. Some argued that they had not reached an appropriate stage of emotional development. They are actually looking for kind of sex education that the student wants in the school.

Sample / participant
Fourth-year girls (for first cycle). Fourth year girls and boys altogether (for second cycle)

Setting
School where the author used to be a teacher.

Procedure
The deputy head in charge of the pastoral care of girls organized an event in which the fourth-year girls were shown a film depicting the birth of a baby in great detail (this is considered as first cycle). Letters requesting parental permission for showing the film had been sent out well in advance.
By lunch time on the day of showing, four girls had simultaneously fainted during the showing. The author remember of arguing that the incident would not be happened if the boys had been there to provide an emotional check on this chain reaction.
The author then decided to test ‘gender based’ theory of emotional maturity.He invited all fourth-year boys to see the film in the geography room after school and any girls who wish to to view it again. A large number of boys and girls turned up.This is the second cycle.
Result : No immature behavior was evidenced from the boys, no girls fainted , and the showing was followed by a thoughtful, lively and sensitive discussion. The fainting episode wouldn’t happened in the presence of boys, and the boys wouldn’t display immature bahaviour in the presence of girls. The success of the second showing then stimulated the gathering of further data from students about their needs in the area of sex education.


Data collection and analysis
Data was collected by observation practice and from student feedback where this provided the basis for changes in the sex education programme within the school. The data processing did not take place against a background of routinized and predictable practices.

Action research ethique
The ethical of action research here could be shown where it clarify the issue and resolve in free and open collegial discourse, characterized by mutual respect and tolerance fort other’s view, in the absence of power constraint on the outcome discussion.

Reliability and validity
The author himself did not claim this as a good example of rigorous educational inquiry. But it does illustrate a process in which ideas are tested and developed in action. By doing action, we will then know whether our ideas are meaningful or not.

Reason why this book should be selected as a reference book

There are some information which are important in action research matter being discussed by the author in this book. He explained on why theory and practice could give raise to a problem for teacher and why do teacher being afraid of theory? Besides discussing about development of action research among teachers, the author also included notes on the fundamental characteristics of action research, dilemmas and temptations of the reflective practitioner and a practical guide to action research.

The theory – practice problem
In this book, the author also discussed on the major problem faced by the teachers. Teachers always afraid of theory and the chapter shows how ‘action research helps in resolving this issue. Teachers found theory is threatening as it is produced by a group of outsider who claimed to be experts. Secondly the feelings also develop due to the knowledge generated is couched in the form of generalization about teacher’s practices. If it applies to al contexts of practice, then it implies that the experiences of teachers operating in particular circumstances is not an adequate basis on which to generate professional knowledge. Thirdly, feeling of threats enhanced by researcher’s employment of model of practice derived from some ideal of society or the human individual.
Many teachers would acknowledge that their practices are shaped by degree beyond their control. Teachers being blamed for doing certain things, but they are not given any indication on how to avoid from being blamed.

The fundamental characteristics of action research
Due to the author, aim of action research is to improve practice rather than to produce knowledge. He defined improvement of practice as to realizing the values which constitute its ends. For example; ‘patient care’ for medicine, ‘justice’ for legal practice and ‘education’ for teaching. If teaching process is about to influence students’ development in intellectual, then it must manifest such qualities as open-ness to their questions, ideas and ways of thinking and so forth. The quality of learning outcomes depends on more than the quality of teaching. Whether poor-quality learning outcomes are due to poor teaching is a matter to be determined in particular cases.
The author locates action research in the kind of reflective practice which aims to improve the realization of process values.

A practical guide to an action research

In this part, the author shared his knowledge on action research such as the model, the activities of action research, the techniques and methods for gathering evidence, reporting action research and also making use of it.

Model of action research being explained by the author is by Lewin’s. Kemmis represents the Lewin cycle by spiral. The basic cycle are identifying general idea, reconnaissance, general planning, developing the first action step, implementing the first action step, evaluation and revising the general plan.The author however do argue some of this model even he did taught that the model is excellent. There are also figures included in this book as to show the Kurt Lewin’s model and the revised version as well (page 70 and 71)

The book also included notes on activities of action research, techniques and methods for gathering evidence (to state some : diaries, tape/video recording, and photographic evidence), how to organize data (to state some : time should be taken to complete 1 cycle), and also reporting an action research.(to state some : should include one’s general idea, techniques being selected and used, and any ethical problems arosed and how it being solved)

Disadvantages

However, after reading this book, I found that there are some disadvantages which are the language being used is quite difficult to be understood especially by those without experience in teaching field or never being a teacher or educator before. As a trainee and first time involving in education field, it was quite difficult to get the picture of what being discussed by the author.
Another disadvantage is certain sentences seems to be so long (up to three lines as to finish 1 sentence) and this could cause misunderstanding.

Besides, there is not many example of action plan being discussed in this book and if there is, the author only discussed it in short and not so specific in terms of data collection, analysis and discussion.

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