Action Research Formative Assessment Guide

We will be looking at your problem description, your context, your question, and your hope/vision and take a look at its essential qualities and how they function in relationship to the whole.

My Problem Description - What's the concern, issue, or need I am facing?
* Essential Qualities - Is it purposeful, describes a need for a clearer understanding or solution, situated in a specific context, delimited by time and space, tied to specific practice(s), grounded in a researchable concept
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Establishes the boundaries of the entire research project by describing how the issue or need presents a imitation to a purpose or goal you have for your practice. Explains how a situation is limiting your accomplishment of larger goals within your practice. Describes the problem using the specifics of time, space, and a concept within your teaching practice.

My Context - What are the characteristics of the relevant persons and places and how are they involved in this situation?
* Essential Qualities - Observed relevant qualities of -
- persons, places, and actions
- interpersonal dynamics, interactions, reactions
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Explains how the specific features of you context give the overall problem its particular dynamics. It gives insights into the specific characteristics and qualities of the persons, the situation, and current interactions as they impact your overall goals for teaching.

My Question - What do I want to understand or resolve related to this problem?
* Essential Qualities - Is it specific, concrete, observable, implies a need, directs problem solving action in a context toward a targeted solution, improvement in quality of understanding, knowledge, or action; It is tied to specific practice(s), grounded in a researchable concept.
*Function in Relationship to the Whole - Grounds the problem in specific, researchable concept that guide the course of action - examining relevant existing research, identifying potential strategies or solutions to implement in practice, and identifying potential strategies for gathering data on the problem, or the change.

My Hope/My Vision - What am I hoping will be different in my classroom practice as a result of my research?
*Essential Qualities - Describes desired differences central to my inner purpose as a teacher, relational development of specific values, qualities of actions, relationships, knowledge, principles.
*Function in Relationship to the Whole - Explains how you anticipate specific actions will change the current situation, potentially ripple through other aspects of life in your classroom, and impact your ability to meet your vision, values, principles, and long range goals you have for learning in your "ideal classroom".

Conceptual Knowledge Base - What major and supporting concepts from the research literature are central to my problem and question?
* Essential Qualities - Identifying the nature of the need - stating the research problem, question, identifying major and supporting concepts involved.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Restates the problem and question, identifying how research literature is being sought to clarify concepts relevant tot he problem and relationship to your overall practice.

Concept Meanings and Relationships - What do these concepts mean and how are they related to each other?
* Essential Qualities - For major and supporting concepts - descriptions, definitions, meanings, properties, relationships among the concepts.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Develops the detailed qualities of the concepts involved and their relationships to one another in the problem. Creates an understanding of how the concepts are working in practice. This is done through examples (positive and negative) from research that reveal how these concepts are at work in practice.

Perspective-Taking - How have varied researchers interpreted these core concepts in relationship to the problem area I am researching?
* Essential Qualities - Framing concepts inside principles, models, and theories in relationship to the problem.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Places the problem inside the fram e of larger principles, theories, or models that guide research in this area of educational practice. Develops the relationship between the problem, its major concepts, and how varied principles, theories or models help frame potential approaches to solving the problem.

Applications-to-Practice - How successfully have the concepts central to this problem been translated into practices related to the changes I am seeking to make?
* Essential Qualities - Evaluating specific models, strategies, programs, techniques, processes by examining positive examples and limitations from examples of research-based practice applying concepts in practice.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Analyzes classroom-based research examples of specific strategies, models, techniques in relationship to their appropriate application and fit for addressing the problem being addressed.

Innovating and Integrating Concepts with My Principles and My Context - How am I adapting these research-based concepts, translating researched techniques into strategies for my own practice to solve or better understand the problem in my own situation?
* Essential Qualities - Translations, modifications, adaptations
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Translates and adapts concepts and strategies into relevant actions for personal practice. Explains how the strategy relates to an overall principle guiding the direction of the practice.

My Plan of Action - What sequence of specific actions will I take to answer my question? How will they unfold over time?
* Essential Qualities - Visible action sequence, flexible, modifiable, specifically dated - instrumentation creation, implementation, reflection points, data collection, data analysis, write-up.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Provides a description of actions and dates to be unfolded over time of implementation. Makes visible points in time for data collection, analysis, and strategies for carrying out the overall study.

My Collection of Data - What data collection tools am I using and what does each need to tell me to answer my question?
* Essential Qualities - Tools fitted to question, triangulation enriches understanding, credible and relevant data for decision-making, describes the context.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Explains choice of data collection formats in relationship to the question being asked and the picture of practice being sought. Explains how the type of data collected will provide a multi-perspective picture of practice or change sought.

My Data Analysis Process - What quantitative or qualitative manipulation of my data do my collection tools require?
* Essential Qualities - Analyzing, processing, categorizing data letting commonalities and divergences emerge from data.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Uses appropriate quantitative or qualitative procedures to process raw data. Manipulates raw data using data analysis methods, letting the data reveal its patterns of convergence and divergence.

Reporting My Results - What does the data look like? How am I organizing, summarizing, and communicating the data? What picture of the problem or change is present? What limitations to understanding the problem are present with the data I collected?
* Essential Qualities - Organizes, displays, and explains patterns and changes; analyzes data limitations.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Uses a reporting format that frames, makes visible, the emergent patterns in the data. Reveals in an organized way for the reader the whole of the data summarized for its emergent convergences, differences, and any changes observed. Discusses limitations to the emergent picture based on the data collected.

My Conclusions - What are my data results to my question telling me about what is going on in my classroom?
* Essential Qualities - Develops data's meanings, infers relationships among patterns and the question under study.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Examines the patterns of convergence and divergence in the data summary report, inferring relationships among the emergent picture in the data and the question under study.

Implications for My Practice - What do my conclusions about what is going on mean for future teaching, development of inner purpose, principles, vision, next questions that need investigating, understanding about best practices in teaching?
* Essential Qualities - Explains impact - on professional knowledge, inner life purpose values, vision, principles, next steps, emerging questions.
* Function in Relationship to the Whole - Explains the impact of conclusions drawn. Identifies how professional knowledge on the matter has changed in relationship to personal principles and vision for teaching. Explains the implications for the way practice will proceed from here and how it relates to personal vision and principles. Explains how new questions are emerging from knowledge gained, limitations or unanticipated outcomes, and their relationship to personal vision and principles guiding practice.