Teachers, todays should be aware that they have multi-tasks not only as teachers but also as ‘researcher’ in the sense that they will investigate their own classes. Thus, teachers may implement Classroom Action Research (CAR) and Research and Development (RD).
1. Classroom Action Research
CAR is conducted by or in cooperation with teachers for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of their educational environment and improving the effectiveness of their teaching.
There are some steps in designing CAR. Kemis and McTaggart mention four broad phases in a cycle of research. The first cycle may become a continuing, or iterative, spiral of cycles which recur until the action
Researcher has achieved a satisfactory outcome and feels it is time to stop.
1. Planning
In this phase you identify a problem or issue and develop a plan of action in order to bring about improvements in a specific area of the research context. This is a forward-looking phase where you consider: i) what kind of investigation is possible within the realities and constraints of your teaching situation; and ii) what potential improvements you think are possible. Fischer (2001) says that typically there are four broad areas of teachers’ interests that provide a focus for CAR. These are: a) your teaching and making changes in teaching; b) your learners and how they learn; c) your interaction with the current curriculum and with curriculum innovation; d) your teaching beliefs and philosophies and their connections with daily practice.
Further, in this stage researcher will raise questions that will be used in the research. In CAR, there are some considerations in making research problems. First, avoid questions you can do little about, for example changing the school syllabus. Second, tailor your questions to fit within the time limit you have available. Avoid taking long-term effect. Also, focus on one issue to see where it takes you rather than trying to look at multiple aspects. Finally, choose areas of direct relevance and interest to you, your immediate teaching context, or your school.
2. Action
The plan is a carefully considered one which involves some deliberate interventions into your teaching situation that you put into action over an agreed period of time. The interventions are ‘critically informed’ as you question your assumptions about the current situation and plan new and alternative ways of doing things.
3. Observation
This phase involves you in observing systematically the effects of the action and documenting the context, actions and opinions of those involved. It is a data collection phase where you use ‘open-eyed’ and ‘open-minded’ tools to collect information about what is happening.
4. Reflection
At this point, you reflect on, evaluate and describe the effects of the action in order to make sense of what has happened and to understand the issue you have explored more clearly. You may decide to do further cycles of AR to improve the situation even more, or to share the ‘story’ of your research with others as part of your ongoing professional development.
(Adapted from Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988, pp. 11–14)
2. Research & Development
Educational Research & Development (R&D) is a research design aimed at developing educational products, like curriculum, syllabus, text books, instructional media, modules, assessment instruments, etc. Research & Development and Classroom Action Research have both similarities and differences. Both research designs aim at solving classroom problems and are usually conducted by classroom teachers, as the problems are found in their classrooms and the research is conducted in their classrooms. The process of the research in both research designs involves several cycles to meet the targeted criteria of success.
Research & development is different from Classroom Action Research in the process as well as the product of the research. Both aim at solving classroom problems but the way they solve classroom problems are different. Classroom Action Research solves classroom problems by producing innovative instructional strategies while Research & Development solves the classroom problems by producing more appropriate instructional media or instructional assessment instruments.
The reason for conducting the research is different. Classroom Action research starts from the problems related to instructional strategies while Research & Development starts from the problems related to the educational products to support the instructions.
The process of conducting the research is different. In classroom Action Research, the strategy is prepared, tried out, and revised to produce an effective instructional strategy. In Research & Development, educational media are prepared, and validated before being tried out.
THE PROCESS OF RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
The process of Research & Development involves several steps to be conducted by the teacher-researcher.
1. Classroom problems related to instructional supporting documents (like the syllabus, the textbook, the media) as well as assessment instruments are identified to be solved.
2. Theories, principles, or criteria of effective instructional supporting documents and assessment instruments are reviewed from related references, from teachers conferences, from discussion with colleagues,
3. The selected instructional documents or assessment instruments considered to be the cause of the problem is developed based on related principles, theories, or criteria that have been studied.
4. The product is reviewed closely by the researcher to make sure that all the appropriate principles have been applied in the development of the product.
5. The product is validated to related experts and revised accordingly to get quality assurance. Different expertise may be needed to validate the quality of the product. A textbook development may need validation from experts in curriculum, classroom instruction, assessment, picture drawing, etc.
6. The instructional product is tried out in a small scale and revised based on the results of the try-out. Targeted criteria of success are needed to determine the acceptability of the product. Try-out to a larger group of students may be needed to get more feedbacks for the product revision.
7. The final product is published. The product must be a set of educational products that are ready to support classroom instructions. A Research & Development may plan to produce a set of English instructional materials for grade VII students covering (1) Unit Lesson Program, (2) Students Work Sheet, (3) Evaluation Sheet, and (4) Teachers book
Other major steps in the R&D cycle which are proposed by Borg & Gall (1989) as follows:
- Research and information collecting – includes needs assessment, review of literature, small-scale research studies, and preparation of report on state of the art
- Planning – includes defining skills to be learned, stating and sequencing objectives, identifying learning activities, and small-scale feasibility testing
- Develop preliminary form of product – includes preparation of instructional materials, procedures, and evaluation instruments.
- Preliminary field testing – includes interview, observational, and questionnaires data collected and analyzed
- Main product revision – revision of product as suggested by the preliminary field-test result
- Main field testing – quantitative data on pre and post test are collected. Results are evaluated dealing with the objectives and are compared with control group data
- Operational product revision – revision the product as suggested by point 6
- Operational field testing – includes interview, observational, and questionnaires data collected and analyzed
- Final product revision – revision of product as suggested by point 8
- Dissemination and implementation – report on product at professional meeting as well as in journals.
What is the measure of acceptability?
Research & Development is conducted to solve classroom problems and to achieve other behaviorally defined objectives. So the criteria of success to measure the acceptability of the product are the evidence that the product has proved to be able to solve the problems and the students of the field try out have achieved the behaviorally defined objectives. It is not necessary to use pretest-post test comparison like the analysis in experimental design as the measure of product acceptability. It is not necessary to compare the average score of the students of the field testing with the average score of other students learning the same skills using another media as the measure of acceptability as this comparison is used to measure the effectiveness of an educational product which is not in the process of development.
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