Action Research

Action research allows the administrator to be a part of the developmental process of change that is taking place on campus. I think it also requires the principal to be ‘visible’. It shows that you are taking an interest in building a successful future for your campus and your students. Another benefit of action research is it allows you to be a reflective practitioner and model instructional leadership. Action research allows you to see things you wouldn’t ordinarily see in the school. Organizational leadership guru Torbert puts it very well when he said that the benefits of action Inquiry is that it challenges our attention to span into different territories of experience (at the personal, group, or organizational scales) in the midst of actions. This practice promotes timeliness – learning with moment to moment intentional awareness – among individuals and with regard to the outside world of nature and human institutions. Action research studies the pre-constituted internalized and externalized universe in the present, both as it resonates with and departs from the past, and as it resonates with and helps to shape the future. Action research is like an experiment, and like any experiment it requires reflection, analysis, and testing to validate itself successful. A principal has to think, analyze, ask questions, and based on the information design a plan to be implemented. If it is successful then reflect on how to improve it. If it is not then the ‘experiment’ did not work and would require further analysis and a new plan of action.