Research
Action research v.s. Traditional research
Action Research
Action Research is a method of systematic inquiry that teachers undertake as researchers of their own practice to identify the question, examine the strategies, and gather the data to determine if it works. The inquiry involved in action research is often visualized as a cyclical process (Mertler, 2014). Action research is to support the educator to develop effective pedagogies by changing their teaching decisions and action to enhance students' engagement and learning.
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Four phases of action research:
1.Planning: Define a specific research question; conducted a literature review; determine data methods
2. Action: Data collection (quantitative or qualitative)
3. Analysis: Organize the data with charts or graphs
4. Conclusion: Reflect on the research
Traditional Research
Traditional research is conducted by professors, scholars, and graduate students on experiments and control groups by using the methods of quantitative to show predetermined degree of satisfaction significance, a cause of effect relationship between variable.
Research Methodologies
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is to gain an understanding of underlying reasons and motivations and to uncover prevalent trends in thoughts and opinions. It usually conducts by collecting and analyzing non-numerical data, such as observations, artifacts, and interviews to gather thoughts, feelings, and experiences (McMillan, 2022).
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is to quantify data and generalize results from a sample to the population of interest. Sometimes followed by qualitative research which is used to explore some findings further. It is usually conducted by a large number of cases representing the population of interest through surveys, rubric scores, and achievement data.
Mixed Methods
Mixed methods attempt to bring qualitative and quantitative data together. It utilizes qualitative to explore a situation and develop a set of hypotheses. Once the hypothesis is established, the research will use quantitative to test them.
Data Collection
Qualitative Data Collection
Qualitative data is often focused on the individual level for the studies. It includes an in-depth open-ended interview (structured and unstructured), direct observations (field research, video, photography, and artifacts), and written documents (journals). Based on different disciplines, the researcher can use different data to collect the information.
Quantitative Data Collection
Quantitative data emphasizes the hard numbers. It typically is to measure the differences among groups, and relationships among variables, and to test hypotheses and theories. Accordingly, quantitative data is a deductive approach and more objective.
Data Analysis
Qualitative Data Analysis
Qualitative data analysis is a procedure to analyze and interpret text-based data. The researcher needs to read, compare, and interpret the details of the data to familiarize the nuance. To effectively read the data, the researcher would utilize coding to categorize the data and find useful data to support their arguments.
Quantitative Data Analysis
Quantitative data analysis refers to the data number based or the data can be converted to numbers. To analyze the number, it often involves statistical analysis methods to get information, such as descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, and standard deviation) and inferential statistics to draw conclusion from data (t-test, ANOVA, correlation, regression).
Qualitative Research v.s. Quantitative Research
Reflection
By taking those two research courses, I learned how to conduct action research by identifying the question, reviewing the literature, collecting data, and analyzing the data. The course provided me with the fundamental skills to implement the research and gain knowledge of the research process. While reviewing the literature, I could obtain diverse information and learned how other scholars conducted their research. Furthermore, I enjoyed collecting data and analyzing the data in that I could examine the process and results. During the process of qualitative and quantitative data collection, I liked to have interviews with my students and participants to know more about their actual learning experiences. By analyzing the results, I realized what I needed to improve in my instructions and how my students learned. The whole research impressed me and I learned a lot during every procedure. The research resources and results motivate me to devote myself to teaching and doing research.
References
McMillan, J. H. (2022). Fundamentals of educational research (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mertler, C. A. (2014). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators (6th ed), Sage Publishing.