Journals Review of Action Research

JOURNALS REVIEW
Journal 1 : Action research as a bridge between pre-service teacher education and in-service professional development for
students and teacher educators
Author : Kari Smith and Orly Sela
Year : 2005

Journal 2 : Action research, pedagogy and change: the transformative potential of action research in pre-service teacher education
Author : Jeremy N. Price
Year : 2001

Journal 3 : Action Research and Distributed Problem-Based Learning in Continuing Professional Education
Author : David McConnell
Year : 2002


FOCUS OF STUDY
Journal 1: To improve course of Teacher as Researcher.
Journal 2: Action research study of an action research course.
Journal 3 : Collaborative work and learning experiences of students involved in distributed problem-based learning (dPBL)

Similarity
Journal 1 and 2 are focus on the improvement of the course content.

SAMPLE
Journal 1 : Student teachers of fourth and final year of teacher education.
Journal 2 : Pre-service teachers
Journal 3 : Students from the United Kingdom,
Eire, mainland Europe, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia

Similarity
Journal 1 and 2 involve pre-service teachers.

SETTING
Journal 1: Final year student
Journal 2 : Teacher candidate, spring
Journal 3 : Area of United Stated


PROCEDURE

Journal 1
• summary of the reflective journal;
 statement of the problem;
 learning about the problem (both from the literature and from the field);
 plan of action;
 documentation of implementation;
 discussion.

Journal 2

 Developing a question or research focus
 Developing a research design
 Analyzing
 Synthesizing
 Interpretations of data.

Journal 3

 Examination of the work of a dPBL group as it occurred online
 Analysis of transcripts of the discussions, debates, activities and shared production.


Similarity
The procedure of the action research of journal 1 and 2 quite same.


DATA COLLECTION
Journal 1
 Documentation of staff meetings
 Personal diaries
 Formal feedback elicited by a 17 item open questionnaire

Journal 2

 Transcripts of audiotapes of classroom conversations
 Questionnaires conducted at the beginning and end of the course
 Action-research journals; the pre-service teachers’ and the students’ writing
(Journals, assignments, e-mail
Correspondence, etc.)
 Informal interviews with teacher candidates
 Videotapes of classroom work
 Documents such as school, district and state policies.

Journal 3

 Observation,
 Ethnography,
 Textual analysis
 In-depth interviews

Similarity
All journals are used questionnaires and observation in their data collection.