Action Research

We have all been to that training where we listen to the researcher stand at a podium and begin to talk about his latest research for the next three hours. They begin with a joke that isn't funny and they fumble through their very dull and unattractive PowerPoint switching back from slide one to slide ten and then back to one. Please don't send me back there... there is so much I could do with those three hours that would positively impact my classroom.
Action research, or administrative inquiry, has now put the power into the hands of the educator and has given some real authority in making decisions that affect their own classrooms. Following the steps that are presented in the text, Leading with Passion and Knowldege by Nancy Dana, educators can now focus in on an issue that is affecting the campus and begin to find practical and research based solutions to these problems. But what makes Action research so much more approachable is that this can then be presented to the staff by the very people that produced the results, the teachers and staff for that campus. The cycle then continues onto a new topic/issue/concern and the school takes responsibility for their own problems and searches to seek real solutions.