Assignment 1: Book Review

The Case for Pedagogical action research
1. Pedagogical- principles of learning&teaching at tertiary level
2. Action- changes of result from the research
3. Research- systematic collection, interpretation, dissemination of one's findings
- systematically studying action research principles for the continues grow of educational theory (Mcniff, 1993)

Action Research Concept
- self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations
- improve rationality&justice and understanding of own practices
- improve settings/situations where the practices are carried out
- reflect on own teaching in a systematic way (Parker, 1997)
- encourages academics to handle their own professional development by being active learners

Why Teachers have to do Action Research
The importance of action research is to let teachers to investigate and reflect own teaching by communicating ideas and practices to their peers. This way, teachers will be explored to the relationships between teaching and learning, research and integrating and applying knowledge. Automatically, knowledge about teaching and learning through reflection on practice, preparation and inquiry helps in enhancement of student learning.

Spiral of Action Research (Model)
1. Kurt Lewin
Planning --> Action --> Research (Facts finding about result of action taken)
2. Research Cycle (Norton, 2009)
a) Observe-observe/notice something that can be improved
b) Plan-a course of action that involves changing of something in own practice
c) Act-carry out changes
d) Reflect- effect of change has made

Research Setting:
University

Sample Participants:
Third year psychology students (counseling, crime&organizational)

Process for Carrying Out Action Research(ITDEM)

Aim:helping psychology students to write better essays
1. Identify problems
2. Thinking of ways to tackle the problem
3. Doing it
4. Evaluating (actual research findings)
5. Modify future practice

Research Instruments
1. Questionnaire research
- Open-ended questions
- Closed questions
- Attitude scales or measurement scales
2. Interviews
- Structured
- Semi-structured
3. Experimental designs
- Independent groups
- Matched participants
- Repeated measure
4. Observational research
- Direct
- Naturalistic
5. Correlated studies

Accumulation&Data Analyzation
1. Qualitative Data Analysis
-used when research area do not provide much information
-seek better understanding of the perspective of the person being researched (i.e. interview and focus group)
-gain more in-depth information that maybe difficult to quantify (i.e. open-ended-questions to amplify questionnaire responses)
-already have existing resources (i.e. diaries, students assignments, video recordings and reports)

Techniques used are Thematic Analysis & Content Analysis

Thematic Anaysis
Stage1: Immersion (read transcript and note down general themes notice)
Stage2: Generate categories (generate as many categories as possible and write down a label that best describes each category)
Stage3: Deleting categories (cut down categories that overlap or repeated)
Stage4: Merging categories (refine&describes categories into themes)
Stage5: Checking themes (reread transcripts together with themes list and revise whenever necessary)
Stage6: Linking themes (make sense of the analytical points to support the contents)
Stage7: Presenting findings (select the most important theme and select examples of transcripted data. Construct overall commentary on how the data examples are linked together)

Content Analysis
In search for richer meanings and deeper understanding, content analysis is particular useful when it comes to analyse content of students written assignments. Here, Norton (2009) applied Biggs and Collis' (1982) SOLO taxonomy:
Pre-structural (no understanding) --> Uni-structural (focus on just one task element) --> Multi-structural (address a number if elements in task but unable to do any connections between them) --> Relational (make connections between interrelating parts of the task&construct balanced answer) --> Extended abstract (see beyond parameters of task and think hypothetically about alternatives in different contexts)

Stage1: Deciding unit of analysis (what units will be used? (i.e words, phrases, sentences or paragraphs)
Stage2: Dividing transcript into units of analysis (break down transcripts into 25 information units)
Stage3: Construct categories (Immersion, generate/delete categories,merging categories&checking themes)
Stage4: Assign units of analysis to categories (coding-ensure all information units assigned to one category)
Stage5: Calculate the percentage of information units that fall into each category

Summary: thematic analysis gives richer understanding of topics you are researching from the participant's point of view whereas content analysis approach are more formulaic objective approach and uses quantitative measures to do so

2. Quantitative Data Analysis
Useful in pedagogical action research studies where the method is an experiment, attitude scale or questionnaire, observation study which involves counting, produces any information that is quantifiable (age ranges, number of years teaching etc.). There are two types of quantitative analysis: statistics for description and statistics for drawing conclusions (inferential statistics).

Descriptive Statistics
Measures large body of information or data and it can present results clearly. It can be calculate by hand, calculator or using Excel.

Techniques used:
a) central tendency or averages (mean, median and mode)
b) dispersion or variability (range, mean deviation and standard deviation)
c) frequency counts

Inferential Statistics
Statistical analysis goes beyond level of description and attempts to draw conclusions from data collected. Used when testing hypotheses by making predictions such as looking to see if a teaching intervention improves student learning.

There are three main types (Techniques):
a) Tests for correlations (shows the strength of the relationship between two factors or variables. When in doubt to use which correlation test, choose to use Spearman's test and have more paired variables)
b) Tests for differences for repeated measures (paired variables)
Simple to calculate and can be useful when when statistical test is carried out on paired variables which may not necessarily be derived from an experimental design
c) Test of difference for independent groups
when comparing scores from two independent groups, you can choose to use Mann-Whitney (non-parametric) or the t-test independent groups (parametric)
d) Tests for goodness of fit
This tests is best used when there is no measures or scores involved but simply observations or categories

Research Ethics
Generally, code of practice had agree mostly on three basic principles: informed consent, privacy and confidentiality and protection from harm. Consent means asking people to agree or take in research without being force whereas informed means giving them sufficient information on which to make a realistic judgement on possible consequences of taking part.

Informed Consent:In pedagogical research, voluntary in participating in research must be highly considered. In order to complete their research task, lecturers should never ever misuse their authority or force students and convince that it will be beneficial for students studies or in the future. In addition, involving colleagues in your pedagogical research is never smooth sailing even if they said yes particularly if there is a difference in status. In this case, whens it is concerned with lecturer or learning-support colleague, the power/authority element will have huge impact when it comes to high status staff and junior colleagues.

Information: Giving a fair information during pedagogical research are very important to potential participants about the study. Information can be an oral statement in a lecture to student or one-to-one basis with colleagues but usually research information are delivered in participant information sheet and a consent form. Some of the elements should be followed that are stated in this book are:
1. Statement and explanation about research aims, expected duration, description of what will be involved and what will happen to the findings
2. Description of any possible discomfort or risks might faced and any possible benefits
3. Disclosure of appropriate alternative procedures that might be advantageous to the participants
4. Statement on all information collected as part of the research study will be keep for how many years, details where it will be stored and what form it will be stored
5. Statement on procedure of confidentiality protection
6. Statement about voluntary participation and rights to withdraw at any time
7. Details on how and when participants will received either a copy of final research report or summary of research findings
8. Distribution arrangements via Email or Internet
9. Use of experimental and control group
10. Collection of data on audio or videotapes

Anonymity and Confidentiality:Anonymity refers to concealing of identity of participants in all research findings (including research seminars, conference papers and book chapters). Confidentiality refers to who has the right of access to the data provided by participants.


Reliability and Validity
Reliability refers to consistency over time and an accurate representation of total population under study. If the result of study can be replicate under similar methodology, research instrument is considered reliable. Validity refers to precision of data or result that will determine how truthful research result can be measure. In terms of qualitative analysis, methods used are thematic and content analysis. In thematic analysis, this study had interview ten lecturers and later the information were analyze in 7Stages mentioned above. This step was rather reliable as the data was collected consistently whereas it might not be valid as the data will not be precise. As for Content analysis, analysis were done based on Biggs and Collis (1982) SOLO taxonomy and also involved 5Stages mentioned above.This analysis is more to formulaic approach so it would be much more reliable and valid in the sense of data is accumulated and then generated by using formula. From there, comparison on difference and similarity can be presented. As for Quantitative analysis,data were collected and were generated and measured into statistic. In which choosing of parametric and non-parametric test is considered via probability and testing for statistical significance. This analysis is rather reliable and valid as it uses formula and statistic to present data. (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR8-4/golafshani.pdf)

Evaluation of the whole Book
I would say this book is a very perfect reference to use when conducting action research in university. The concept were clearly specified in this book but the importance on why teachers should do action research is not clearly stated and was mentioned here and there between first two chapters that i have to look out for the information and key-points to elaborate on that part.This book also do not emphasis on the model of action research and it only mention the basic of action cycle by Lewin and re-summarize by Norton in Spiral of Action Research. However, the qualitative and quantitative data analysis were elaborated clearly and the stages and when and why we should choose that particular test were stated in very organized manner so this will be a superb reference when it comes to data collection and analyzation.