Administrative inquiry is taking the time to gather your recent decisions or strategies used and reflect on their success or failure.The inquirer would gather information from teachers, students, classroom interactions, or even test scores to guide their reflection. Using these findings the researcher will compare the decisions and present them to the stakeholders and use these results to guide the next decisions to be made.
The traditional educational research was done usually by university researchers and outside souces and was very process – product oriented. They would come an speak to practicing educators about what they feel should go on in the classrooms. This traditional practice seemed negligent because the individual dispensing the information lacked the in the field experiences that the educators in the classroom were seeing on a day to day basis. So some of their research was flawed. However with action research it calls upon each individual educator to reflect on their own goals and to identify the successes and failures from input they have gathered. It is an immediate inquiry on the effectiveness of their actions and provides for an opportunity to remedy the failures on a regular basis or to capitalize and improve on the successes. One example of action research for a school could be to examine their state test scores to identify areas that need improvement, and then determine a plan of action to improve student performance. Another example of action research could be examining how the development of a common location for shared knowledge and the use of interactive communication tools increase the collaborative effectiveness of the classroom? A third example of action research in the educational setting could include and inquired as to would setting up community circle time to dialogue with students about their learning experiences in the classroom, in what ways, if any, will the information about their learning processes help me redesign the way I teach?
The benefits of conducting action research are found in the reflection. The reflection is the most valuable learning experience. It allows a connection between what was in the past and what will occur in the future. Another benefit of action research is that it gets everyone in the learning community involved in the research and dialogue to improve the schools. Inquiry is often the best method for identifying a problem. Every problem in a school setting is not solved by on solution however each environment may have a different solution all within itself. The action research method allows for focus on the tasks within your community and therefore can lead to more valuable results.
