What I have learned about action research and how I may use it.

I was vaguely familiar with action research coming into this course.  I have had student interns in my classroom and they were required, by their college course work, to plan and complete an action research project.  I, however, was a bystander in the process.  After reading the Dana and Harris texts, I have a much deeper understanding about the motivation for conducting this inquiry.  It is just that-inquiry.  Inquiry meaning a systematic investigation.  The idea about reflecting upon your work, collecting data and analyzing it to come to conclusions about how to better what you do seems quite obvious.  Why haven't we all been doing this for years?  It is not profound idea, yet it has the potential to have a significant impact on an administrator's ability to lead, a teacher's ability to teach and a student's ability to learn.  It is important to continually study our own practices and reflect to determine if what we have done, or are doing, is the best practice.  Action research makes perfect sense.  We instill in our students the need to be be life long learners and as teachers and administrators we should model this.  Learning is constant and the need to improve or change is constant as well.  Inquiry allows leaders, in any capacity, to reflect and grow.  If this information is taken advantage of it makes for a better, more well rounded leader.  Action reseach allows teachers and/or administrators to have ownership over the changes or improvements made.  The buy-in will be greater therefore the chances of the change being implemented and successful is also greater.