Putting the action in research
For Melody Anastasiou, who teaches a self-contained 1st- through 3rd-grade class at PS/IS 861 on Staten Island, it was the frustration of watching her 3rd-graders sit for state tests they could not comprehend. National research told her that phonics instruction was not effective if introduced for the first time in 2nd grade. “But I said, ‘then what?’” So she piloted a new phonics program with her older students, who went on to make steep reading gains.
For Tim Evans, a social studies teacher at Brooklyn HS for the Arts, it was his struggle to get the lowest third of his students to achieve. His school’s class sizes ranged from 14 to 34. Most published research in the United States finds that class size has little effect in high school. But Evans ran simple statistical tests to demonstrate that small classes made a major difference for his weakest students, although there was little impact on higher achievers. “We know not all general education students are the same,” he said.
Anastasiou and Evans conducted action research in their classrooms to answer their own questions about instruction. Action research is not research that would meet classic academic standards, but it has its own rigor: It has to work with real students in real city schools.
Action research ends with action
Frances Rust, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who helped develop protocols for action research, describes it as “a way to continually grow and learn — the secret of success in the profession of teaching.” Her step-by-step guide takes teachers through a year-long project starting with their own passionate question.
They gather data and evidence from their classrooms, do a literature review and analyze their results. Then, they take some action. Anastasiou persuaded her principal to start a schoolwide phonics program for 2nd- and 3rd-graders; Evans’ assistant principal agreed to reprogram students to small or larger classes depending on achievement levels.
Both teachers are participants in the UFT/AFT Teacher Leaders Program, which is helping teachers like these conduct action research and advocate for their students. Ellen Meyers, who developed the action research program, trains teachers to weigh in on policy.
“What better way to make the case than using evidence from their classrooms?” Meyers asks.
igh-quality research is, of course, being conducted in education, and action research is not designed to replace it. Its purpose is different. Many leading education researchers are economists, trained to do cost/benefit analyses and seek “efficiencies” in which the greatest good goes to the greatest number. This is a sound approach — except for the lowest third in Evans’ classroom who do not benefit. Cost/benefit analysis goes out the window when a teacher must reach and teach every student.
The federal Institute for Education Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent tester of education programs. Again, its rigorous approach is a sound one. But the institute’s “What Works Clearinghouse” of results has sometimes been dubbed the “Nothing Works Clearinghouse,” because the institute applies such a high bar for effectiveness. Teachers with real students who must make a year’s worth of progress cannot afford to wait for the ultimate validation.
A simple design
Anastasiou’s action research project used a simple design. She asked if that 2nd-grade cutoff for phonics instruction should use developmental rather than chronological age. She adopted a new phonics program that used color and kinesthetic clues to identify phonemes, which she thought would work well for her students, whether they were 6 or 9 years old. Then she gathered before and after reading results for her class. After using the phonics program, she found almost every one of her students made a year or more of progress in reading, greatly surpassing her students’ previous results.
Christine Rowland, an English language learner specialist at the UFT, used another simple design with struggling students in a South Bronx high school. She began by disaggregating the data for her English language learners with special needs. She found virtually no reporting on this subgroup. Just one 2009 report buried in city Department of Education files showed her, though, that for thousands of English language learners with Individualized Education Programs around the city, performance was far below other English language learners and other students with disabilities, and even lower than students with interrupted formal education.
Fully one-third of Rowland’s English language learners at the school had IEPs and “none of them had passed any Regents yet.” So Rowland did an action research project to examine effective teaching practices for this subgroup. She learned that her students responded well to the use of technology and did better in oral presentations. She capitalized on these strengths to help many of her students meet graduation standards on the English Regents. In recommendations aimed at her colleagues and the federal Department of Education, Rowland called for changes in practice and for new laws to require separate reporting on this group.
“With action research, teachers are learning how to articulate what goes on in their classrooms to people outside of schools,” says Meyers. Here is research that has teachers’ and students’ best interests at heart.