Reviews
Professional Materials

Margaret Dolbow

KaaVonia Hinton-Johnson

Taking Action With Teacher Research

Reviewed by Margaret Dolbow, reading consultant, Goffstown, New Hampshire, USA.

Taking Action With Teacher Research is a slim volume containing six reports from teachers who have used research in their own classrooms to change their teaching, their planning, and even their entire schools.

Teacher action research starts with a teacher's question, such as, “Would planning with another colleague improve my students' reading skills?” (p. 2). Several weeks of background readings and discussion with colleagues help to clarify the question and describe the context in which it is asked. Permission from the principal, students, and parents is necessary before getting underway. Rationales must be written, literature reviewed, and assessment tools decided on—reading logs, surveys, interviews, or samples of student work. A way must be found to collect and analyze the data and share it once conclusions have been reached. The task seems daunting, yet the seven teachers in this book were dedicated to their research projects and shared their results with convincing voices.

Chapter 1 thoroughly explains this process and even includes “Action Research Paper Review Criteria” to use as a framework for developing a research project, and a website (www.teachersnetwork.org/tnpi) that features one of the authors of an action project reported upon in the book. I visited the website and found it informative and well done. It even has a video of one of the classes using the “fishbowl” to discuss a story the students had read with the teacher.

Chapter 2 is a detailed report of how this teacher, Matt Wayne, came to his research question as he taught language arts to struggling readers. He began with the question, “How can we get the right books into the hands of struggling readers so that they get excited about reading and attain challenging reading standards?” (p. 12). Wayne collected data and devised a new library system with books organized by level of difficulty. He used book talks to sell the easier books to students who had a history of selecting books their friends were reading but that were too difficult. He used sign-out sheets to facilitate data collection for his research. At first he had students maintain response journals. Later he had them meet with partners for book talks, even audiotaping some of their talks.

In working with his students, Wayne noticed a student who was not making progress. He took this problem as a case study to a group of teachers who also taught the student. These teachers continued to use the case-study strategy throughout the year to help their students. Wayne reported positive results in student outcomes. He ends his chapter research with policy recommendations based upon the day-to-day work of education.

Jane Fung's research was done as a mentor teacher who assessed how new teachers develop when they are in a professional network and whether participation in that network makes them more familiar with state standards. She was also looking critically at how a mentoring program works. This chapter is mostly a narrative of how the “Early Literacy Club” functioned to support new teachers. It demonstrated the throes of any new organization and the soul searching Fung went through to keep the network of teachers going. At the end of the research, teachers credited the network with aiding their professional development. It is noteworthy that some new teachers who did not participate in the network left their teaching positions.

Lara Goldstone investigates the “impact of parental understanding of the new standards for speaking and listening on their children's performance” (p. 64). She collected data on student achievement of speaking standards and began trying to communicate to the mostly Asian parents that their children needed to speak up in class. In her case studies she was able to show how important parent involvement was in changing student effort in class.

Carol Tureski actually changed schools in order to pursue her research in how allowing for greater choice and time for reading during the school day affected students' reading performance. Her new position gave her flexibility for ordering reading material and manipulating the schedule. She surveyed students, parents, and other teachers on the effects perceived over time.

Natasha Wariko compared the effects of small to large class size on student achievement and attitude in a mathematics classroom.

My favorite chapter was Janet Price's work on portfolio assessment. In this chapter, Price shows how portfolio assessment can be improved through teacher training and discussion and analysis of student work, and how the product of the portfolio compares with tasks of the New York English Language Arts Regents. The portfolios assessed social studies and science projects. She showed how weekly meetings of teachers looking at student work and the rubrics used to evaluate them led to improved student performance over time. The teachers changed their teaching to address criteria that were explicit in the rubrics. This work showed how backing up from student assessment changes teaching several grades below the actual test grade.