Final Reflections

My final reflections over EDLD 5301 Research course started at the beginning of the course with Dr. Arterbury’s lecture making me feel that I could complete the action research because it was attainable. When I got the course title, I got nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to succeed due to my previous experiences with writing research papers. After listening to the first lecture and having Dr. Arterbury and Dr. Jenkins lay the whole course out for us, it was reassuring that I was going to be able to succeed and find the course useful. Throughout the entire five weeks of this course, I enjoyed the lectures and the reassurances they provided.

The Adobe Connect meetings that I got to attend were extremely useful, and I really appreciated the postings of the ones that I was not able to attend. I found that others were having the same questions I was having, and having Dr. Abshire available every week for those meeting times was helpful to be able to answer my most pressing question. I think that these opportunities were very beneficial. I was able to connect with other people in different degree plans and other discussion groups through these meetings. This helped me to get others to follow my blog and find other blogs to follow. I think that helped me understand the research process better.

The discussion boards were also another way I was able to get questions answered throughout the course about assignments or other wonderings I had about my action research plan. I was intrigued by some of the comments from my posts and it helped me to further question things in my research. I hope that this will better my research plan and future research that I want to complete.

In the readings, I really enjoyed the nine passions in the Leading with Passion and Knowledge (Dana, 2009) book. This helped me to see how action research could be used in many different ways in my educational career. It gave me a better understanding of why some things were done in the past, and how I could better improve my presentations of staff development in the future. I also enjoyed Chapter 3 in this book (Dana, 2009) describing all of the different ways to be able to collect data. I had not really considered surveys as a part of my data collection, and them being a valid piece of data for my action research plan. Being able to see the variety of ways to collect data helped me to expand my data collections and hopefully provide better results with my action research plan.

I am not enjoying the tk20 part of this degree. I think it is repetitive, and not necessary. However, I will do what I have to do to obtain my degree.

Lastly, having a blog to post my action research plan and gain feedback from others is a something I fretted over. Now I see the benefit of posting things on the blog for others to see as a way of communicating my action research plan for them to be able to benefit from all the work I am doing. I have been able to get feedback that helped me to see that my data may not show what I wanted it to, and realize that my camp might not be long enough to gain the results I was looking for in the numerical data.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this course and the knowledge it has provided me. I know that I will continue to use action research throughout my educational career, and even into my personal life. 

Dana, N. F. (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.