Abstract

For Burns (2010), Action research (AR) can be a very valuable medium to extend our teaching skills and gain more understanding of ourselves as teachers, our classrooms, and students. Some time ago, as a teacher, I was facing several classroom issues and I wanted to solve one of the issues immediately. Getting inspired from the study about Action Research, I carried out Exploratory Action Research (Rebolledo, Smith and Bullock, 2016) that helped me to explore my classroom issues regarding individual support to my students who were struggling to learn English. This article reports the finding of the four-week-long research on supporting students’ learning through the use of group work in a large ESL classroom where the teacher’s individual support was almost impossible.

Introduction

There is a clear statement of the problem that I faced followed by the objective of this study. Moreover, the way I explored the causes of problems and the way out might interest the readers. There is a collection and analysis of enough data in the exploratory phase. The review of the concerned literature is another part of the paper. My real intervention actions with different evaluation tools have been presented under ‘Interventions and evaluation’. The findings of my research have been mentioned in the conclusion. I have tried to see the relevance of my research findings in different classroom situations. Finally, the annexure part includes different evaluation tools, participants’ responses and etc.

Teaching context

The story begins when I was posted as a community high school English teacher to the comparatively remote zone of my district which was mostly attended by two ethnic community students: Magar and Tamang. The students from these two communities made above ninety percent of the total students. English was their third language after their mother tongue and Nepali language. Students were often found to be speaking in their mother tongue even in English lessons being in their ethnic cluster.

There were sixty-four students in grade 10 and I had a forty-minute English lesson every day except Saturday. Because of the large classroom size, group work was difficult. I generally made mass presentation in front of class and asked the students whether they understood but most of the students expressed that they were not able to get the points. I tried to approach some students individually to make them clear but individual guidance was not always possible because of time constraint. So, I had to leave the class without satisfying my students and due to the time constraint, I could not give them constructive feedback. As a result, the poor students never improved, the frequency and type of mistakes increased and learning became ineffective. The level of English of most of the students was below average. Most of them could not communicate with the level of the course designed for them. Neither the teacher had time to talk to them nor the parents in their home could solve their learning problems. I was disappointed that if I had been able to maintain some degree of individual support to my students, their learning standard would have improved. It drew my interest towards scaffolding students’ learning through group work. Therefore, I decided to carry out small classroom-based research to find out why the problem occurred and how I could support each individual in my ESL classroom.

My Exploratory Research

I started to explore the reasons behind why I was unable to support my students individually. I prepared the tools of data collection and began to explore with a detail plan.

The exploratory phase provided me with some interesting findings that answered my question why my students lacked individualized teacher support. The first finding that touched me was the way students formed groups. The students were actually sitting in their ethnic cluster and using their mother tongue to understand English. Secondly, most students themselves formed their own ability groups. As a result, most of the benches lacked the students who could offer learning support to their classmates. The concept of group work and individual support had not been developed among the students. Thirdly, students expressed that they never noticed their teacher making effort to make them work in mixed ability groups so that they could learn from each other. Finally, both teachers as well as students agreed that the teacher’s individualized support was impossible because of the large number of students. Therefore, I decided to lunch my intervention influencing these three reasons with an aim to bring some change regarding individual support to all kind of learners.

Review of the related literature

To find out the opinion of experts about the possibility of individual support to all kind of learners in large classes, I began to look for various studies done in this area. Our major problem was to enhance students’ current level of ability. Lev Vigotsky (1978) proposed the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), a metaphorical space between the child’s level of current ability to solve a particular problem and the potential ability. According to him, enhancement can be achieved with the careful assistance of someone else, usually a more knowledgeable expert, i.e. a parent or a teacher or more capable learners during collaborative tasks. One implication of the Vygotskian approach for language teachers is that it is important to pay attention to individual differences and consider alternative ways and levels of assisting learners (Burner, 1985).

Moreover, a teacher’s story from Cameroon seemed very useful in my context. Theorizing the story of Kuchah Kuchah from Cameroon, Kuchah and Smith (2011) have presented the instances of managing very large under-resourced classroom. Focusing on collaborative effort on bottom-up language teaching strategy, they extracted some principles for ‘autonomy of learners’.

• Getting to know/building rapport with pupils/students
• Negotiating with pupils/students
• Viewing pupils/students as resource providers/as resources themselves
• Building up credit with the administration and with other teachers

(Kuchah and Smith 2011, p. 137)

The theory seemed effective while administrating group works. The study of the literature offered me some insights that collaborative tasks help a great deal in the classroom where teacher’s individualized support is lacking. The concept of Vigotsky’s MKO (more knowledgeable one) encouraged me to mix diverse ability students in a group so that the support consolidates. The ideas of Kuchah and Richard, extracted from large class practice, offered strategic and procedural steps for intervention that guided me to implement various group work strategies where I could make my students work in small groups with careful guidance from my side. In the groups students could learn from each other and slow learners got support from their peers.

Interventions and evaluation

During my intervention and evaluation phase, students were given an opportunity to work in groups. The well monitored scaffolding initially started by ‘learning leaders’ and afterwards guided by the slogan ‘learn from the friend next to you’ established a system where students in groups could learn from each other.  Details of intervention steps are given below:

Week 1

For the detail intervention steps, I followed the detail action plan. Different groups were formed and during the process of forming groups, I found that most of the students were working in their won ethnic groups and the fast learners preferred to work with same ability classmates. Especially the girls from Magar and Tamang family were enjoying their ethnic groups while boys were mixed together disregarding their ethnic origin. Thinking that manipulating the existing group dynamics I would be violating the students’ right to choose their friends; I consolidated the existing groups with very less manipulation. I convinced some more capable students to be in different groups and fixed the learning leaders in each group so that one would be more responsible for the group work. Every day I observed the students working in their groups and tried to ensure that the students were learning from their friends.

I conducted different short orientation sessions for all the students in different groups and for the learning leaders separately. These orientation sessions guided my students participate in group discussions and encouraged the learning leaders to closely monitor their group without making their classmates feel inferior. I maintained daily journal where I jotted the findings of my observation and my feelings that I had during the daily activities. My own daily journal was a good source of information for my research work. When the students were busy in their group activities, I observed them, monitored them and provided them the instant feedback.

After they worked in groups for six days, I launched a student satisfaction survey questionnaire which would inform me how satisfied the students were in their group and how far they were learning from their classmates. My observation report and daily journal indicated that the students were gradually contributing in group work.

Week 2

On the last day of week 1, student satisfaction survey was administered. The report was extremely satisfactory. Almost all the students responded they were hundred percent satisfied in their group responding the question: ‘Are you happy being in the group you are in?’ Out of fifty-five respondents, only two students responded that they would like to change their group although they were not completely dissatisfied. In the same way, almost all the students were satisfied with their learning leaders. More than ninety-five percent students agreed that they easily got desired support from their group members. Regarding the teacher’s support in the group, all fifty-five respondents agreed that the teacher’s support to the group was completely satisfactory.

Despite all these satisfactory results, more than fifty percent students thought that the teacher was not supporting them individually.  Though the group activities, sharing and support system seemed fine and effective, I experienced a threat, i.e. the students who had difficulty in learning were simply copying ‘the right answers’ from their groupmates. Then my focus, as my plan, was directed towards how to make the students learn from their friends rather than merely copying ‘the right answers’. When I asked the logic after the ‘right answers,’ most of the students were dumbfounded. I thought something must be done. So, I decided to lunch series of orientation session for every group separately so it would function like a close counseling session. In the counseling session, I tried to make my students understand the true meaning of ‘learning’. Throughout the week I was checking, observing and finding whether they were truly learning. For this, I checked the understanding of two students from each group every day for four days and filled my observation checklist. By the end of second week, the tendency of merely copying the right answers had been gradually changing into seeking for true learning.

Week 3

            This week I was more directed towards reducing the learning responsibility load of the learning leaders. I tried to make the learning leader’s role more indirect and hidden. At first, I collected the opinions from three learning leaders about the learning tendencies and improvements of their classmates. They reported that their friends were trying to learn and there was big change in their attitude in comparison to the previous week. The major change according to them was that the students began to ask questions and clarify doubts rather than just copying the right answers. Responding to the question how they feel about the responsibilities they have to take as leaders during group work, they said they were satisfied and happy helping their classmates. However, I wanted to reduce the direct responsibilities of learning leaders; therefore, with their consent, I dismissed the title learning leader and launched the slogan ‘learn from the friend next to you’. If the students wanted to be clearer, they would approach the friend next to them or whoever could support them. Doing this, I thought, the individual support from each other would be strengthened.

Every day, I encouraged all the groups to learn from each other. I reminded them there was no leader in their group. When the students were busy in their group, I monitored them and provided them with instant feedback. If some students consulted me regarding some problems, I encouraged them to find the solution in group with their friends. I watched the learning process of each group very carefully and recorded their improvement with the help of my observation sheet.

Week 4

I wanted to find out how the entire campaign had been from the prospective of the slow learners for whom this study had been launched. For this, I randomly selected twelve of them, two students from each group and administered questionnaires. Twelve students out of twelve responded that they would like to continue the practice and this practice brought some positive changes in their learning pattern. Almost all of them, ten out of twelve, believed that individual support system was really built in English class. In summary, students were satisfied with the practice and they said that the campaign was very useful.

Further, I received written responses from six slow learners and analyzed them. Most of the students responded that the practice of group work had really been fruitful, they began to learn instead of copying right answers. One of my students wrote- “At first, I used to be scared of asking questions and my confusions were never gone. But now discussing the confusion in group has been a very easy technique to solve any confusion” (Shuruma ma prashnaharu sodhna daraauthe ra sadhai confused rahanthe. Tara ahile samuhama chhalphal garda confusion haru samadhan garna nikai sajilo bhaeko chha). Another student wrote “The group leaders supported us immensely and they have been our true learning partner” (Toli netako support nikai thulo thiyo. Uni bata hamile sachchikai sikne awasar paayau). Similarly, another response was “We expect the same technique will be used for other subjects also” (Haami aasha garchhau ki anya wishayaharu maa pani yahi techniqueharu laagu garine chha.)

Conclusion

The exploratory phase of my classroom-based research gave me some useful insights into my actual problem and guided me through an action plan that I developed for changing the existing situation. From the intervention phase of my research, I learned that the student assisted individual support through effective group work is more useful, effective and possible in large class where individualized teacher support was not possible. Regular practice of working in groups helped students overcome hesitation and they began to clarify their doubts/confusion among themselves and got support from each other. Thus, making students work in mixed ability groups is the better way to scaffold students’ learning and it helps a great deal particularly in large classes. The practice of exploratory research carried out in my ESL class was extended to mathematics class and the report was very positive.

To conclude, this kind of regular practice of exploring classroom issues and solving problems within the classroom scenario made me more confident. I share my ideas with my colleagues and encourage them to carry out exploratory research during their teaching hours, without taking it as extra burden, for learning about their issues and solving problems.

References

Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners. New York: Routledge.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the development of children, 23(3), 34-41.

Kuchah, K., & Smith, R. (2011, June). Pedagogy of autonomy for difficult circumstances: from practice to principles. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 5(2), 119-140.

Smith, R, Bullock, D & Rebolledo,P (2016). Champion Teachers: Stories of Exploratory Action Research. London: British Council.

Author’s bio:

Ram Prasad Aryal is an English teacher and a head teacher in Adarsha Secondary School, Gajuri, Dhading. He completed M Ed in English Language Teaching from Kathmandu University. He is a life member of Nepal English Language Teachers Association (NELTA). The core classroom practice is the area of his interest in ELT.

Reflection in ELT

Reflection is one of those words that everyone knows, and everyone thinks they do quite effectively until someone comes along and really defines the word, and maybe asks some pertinent questions about the quality of those reflections. That is when everyone stops and has to reassess the whole concept. I am guilty of this, especially in the early part of my teaching career, and occasionally even now! Meaningful and effective self-reflection is one of the most challenging but more rewarding practices for an individual in any profession, but more so in teaching. One might ask why teaching is special in this regard. Teaching is actually quite a lonely profession in that while you may have excellent colleagues, at the end of the day, it is just you with your learners. No one else is in the classroom with you to support, challenge, question, or guide you. Being responsible for someone’s language progress requires you to constantly assess your approach and skills as a teacher.

What is reflection?

In some cultures, reflecting on your actions, behaviour, and development is taught from a young age but in others, the onus is on people around you to tell you how you are doing. In some professions, self-reflection is a part of the training, while in others, it is not given much attention. This can also vary between training programmes within a profession. In the world of ELT, this can result in novice teachers following their training blindly, experienced teachers stagnating in their approach, and managers being seemingly harsh during post-observation feedback conversations. It is true that most teacher training courses have some reflective practice built in. Trainees are informed about the benefits of reflecting on one’s teaching, but enough emphasis is perhaps not placed on how vital reflection is for both professional progress, and the planning and delivery of lessons on a daily basis. As Mann (2005, p. 105) describes, reflection is articulating “an inner world of choices made about the outer world of teaching”. Being able to describe, analyse, and evaluate teaching practice, and develop based on those thoughts is what effective reflection is. It involves both intellectual and affective aspects, both of which need to be explored. (Boud, Keogh & Walker, 1985 p. 3).

How do teachers reflect? – Types of ‘reflectors’ and issues

The most basic form of post-lesson reflection is to think about what went well in the lesson, what did not go well, and what the teacher would do differently next time. While this is a great starting point because at least it highlights that one must look at both positives and action areas, it can be limiting, and not very meaningful. Some will take these three aspects and reflect quite deeply but most teachers do not have the time or inclination for that. What often happens, and again something I am guilty of, is, the teacher finishes a class, has a quick little think about the overall lesson, can maybe identify one or two strengths and action areas, then gets on with the day. These thoughts are very rarely recorded anywhere, explored, or even revisited but the teacher can confidently say that they reflected.

Being a teacher, and having worked with other teachers as their mentor or manager, has exposed me to a range of reflection types. There is the ‘ranter’, who is extremely self-critical and feels nothing in the lesson went well. They can only see the faults and end up feeling quite dejected after a reflection leading them to avoid doing a reflective activity unless absolutely required. They also tend to try to change even good practice without realising it because they believe it was all bad. Then you have the ‘romantic’ who believes the lesson went very well indeed and there is nothing they would change. Finally, the ‘revelations’ type of teacher, who has several great ideas that come up from the lesson, that may or may not have to do with how the lesson actually went. However, more often than not, these ideas are not recorded, and end up being forgotten. It is rare to find a teacher whose reflections are balanced, objective, constructive, and truly meaningful, at least among novice teachers.

Moreover, thinking about what went well can be deceptive because many times, new teachers focus on lessons being fun but forget to look at how effective it is in terms of real-life application. So, while an activity or the lesson was fun and engaging, which could be defined as “having gone well”, students may not have left the class with new knowledge or skills. Similarly, the question about what the teacher could have done differently can be a little pointless. In a language institute, it is highly unlikely that you will teach the same lesson to the same group of students and so, doing the lesson again with changes seems irrelevant. You may teach a new class the same lesson, but the students would be different which would mean you need to adapt it to suit the new group anyway. It might seem obvious that the reflection needs to extend beyond the literal meaning of the question but as we have seen, teachers do not always have the time and/or interest, nor the training, to think about it in that much depth.

The final issue is that as teachers embark on the journey of meaningful self-reflection, they tend to focus on stating what happened in the lesson, rather than exploring why it did, what caused it, what reactions the learners had, etc. Reflections are often superficial like “students didn’t participate well”, “it was an engaging lesson”. It would help teachers to say at what stage did students not participate and why they feel that happened, or what about the students’ responses demonstrated that the lesson was engaging.

Tips for meaningful reflection

The question, then, is how does one reflect meaningfully? There are a few tips I follow and have shared with colleagues that we have found useful.

1. Be regular with your reflective practice and document it. You can choose what works for you. You need not do a detailed reflection after every lesson. You may choose to do it once a week or once a fortnight. Whatever you decide, it helps to stick to it. It is also a good idea to find a way to document your reflections so that you can revisit them, either for ideas or to check progress. There are many ways to do this.

• Write in a journal. This is the classic method and works well. You can use different colours to highlight different types of reflections.
• Use a digital tool. You can type up your reflections so they are all in one easily accessible folder, send an email to yourself, or do an infographic for your reference (if you are the more creative type).
• Make a voice recording. Most phones have a recording app. It does not have to be a long recording, maybe just a few minutes to capture all your thoughts right after a lesson.

2. Have a focus area for each week/month. The tendency is to try and reflect on everything all the time. It can be more effective to identify some action or exploratory areas and just focus on one or two of those for a period of time. You can create a reflection document based on these focus areas to avoid being tempted to start thinking about all aspects of the lesson.
3. Avoid using passive voice. This one sounds almost ridiculous but it does make a difference. Many teachers write “This was done well.” There is no clarity on who did what, why, or how! While these may seem obvious, especially to the one writing, it can change your perspective when you write in the first person. Not only do you take responsibility for the good and the not-so-good practice, but you also think more deeply about it. So, try saying something like, “I clarified the language point in a meaningful way, using relevant examples”.
4. Have a reflection buddy (if possible). It is nice to have someone to discuss lessons and ideas with. Having someone who can observe your lessons every so often, give you feedback and ideas, and be a sounding board is wonderful.
5. Watch your own lessons. Depending on accessibility and consent from learners, it can be beneficial once in a while, to take a video of your lesson and watch it back. This can show us aspects of our teaching that we are not aware of. It highlights our tone of voice, choice of vocabulary, mannerisms, responses to students, etc. These are areas that often we think we do in one way but may actually be quite different in practice.

It is important to remember that reflection is a lot more than just ‘having a think’ about a lesson. (Harrison, 2012 p. 7) It involves asking questions, exploring aspects of teaching, and considering ways to develop one’s skills further. While it may seem tedious to incorporate reflective activities into a busy teaching week, having a routine and being prepared with documents or tools beforehand can result in reflection being thought-provoking, rewarding, enjoyable, and an essential aspect of your teaching practice.

 References

Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (1985). What is reflection in learning? In Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (Eds.) Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page Ltd.

Harrison, J. (2012). Professional learning and the reflective practitioner. In Dymoke, S. and Harrison, J. Reflective Teaching and Learning: A Guide to Professional Issues for Beginning Secondary Tecahers. London: SAGE Publications.

Mann, S. (2005). The language teacher’s development. Language Teaching 38, pp.103-118.

Venunathan, S. (2015). Impact of guided collaborative reflective practice on in-service English language teachers. (M.A. Dissertation). University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.

Author’s bio:

Seetha has been in the field of ELT for over 17 years. She has taught across contexts, age groups, language levels, and course types. She is now a freelance teacher, trainer, and CELTA tutor. Besides training and designing customised courses/workshops, she enjoys cooking, travelling, and meeting new people.

Abstract

Many teachers do not easily believe that a classroom teacher can become a researcher, a writer, and a research mentor. However, they can contribute to the knowledge industry by exploring their own classroom contexts, analyzing local narratives, and sharing them throughout the world by writing papers, presenting the findings at the conference, and creating a community of practitioners. In this write-up, I have reflected on my experience of how I learned action research and became a research mentor. Furthermore, I have discussed how action research can be the best tool for the teachers’ professional development, students’ empowerment, and the change in the existing classroom situations.

Keywords: action research, empowerment, professional development, transformation

Introduction

The heated discourse in academia nowadays is about research and innovation. People talk about research-based education in schools and universities. In Nepal’s context too, scholars often complain that education is not scientific, innovative, and practical.  As a result, universities have also established research centers to encourage their teachers towards the research besides teaching in the classroom. In high school education as well, teachers are encouraged to do classroom-based researches or action researches by making the provision of awarding marks on action research for their promotion. However, the research culture is yet to develop in Nepal’s education. Therefore, the research needs to be redefined from the teachers’ perspective. In this reflective writing, I have argued for carrying out action research as the best tool to improve the existing classroom situation and groom oneself as a professional teacher and researcher.

My reflection as an action researcher

To begin with my practice of action research, I remember my first intervention to improve grade nine students’ speaking skills as an English language teacher in 2015. When I went to the class that contained 55 students (34 girls and 21 boys) and started teaching, I found pin-drop silence there. I thought I became successful in teaching the students and controlling them. I continued teaching for around fifteen days and asked them to reflect on what they learned during my teaching. Nobody answered me. I asked again if anything was wrong. One of the students hesitantly asked me for permission if she could speak in Nepali. After my permission, she shared, “Sir, you taught us very well because you spoke in English but we didn’t understand all”. Then, I further asked, “Why didn’t you ask me at the beginning?  Another boy stood up and spoke in Nepali “Sir, hamilai ta Englishma kasari prasna sodhne nai aaudaina” (Sir, we don’t know how to ask the question in English.)  These responses of the students made me upset for a while and I began to think seriously later. That evening, I posed some questions to myself such as: Was there any problem in my teaching? Why were the students not able to understand my English?  How do my students want me to teach them? Should I tell them everything in Nepali? Soon, I decided to collect students’ views and plan accordingly for further teaching.

The next day, I asked some questions to the students (interviewed them) and found that only five out of fifty-five students understood my teaching in English but they could not ask questions easily. Many of them were reluctant to speak with me even in Nepali. They reported that they lacked basic language functions and speaking practice. Then, I planned to teach them speaking skills for about a month through role-plays. Providing sample dialogues (roles) based on various situations, I asked them to practice role-playing. Slowly, they developed their confidence and performed better. Later, they started writing skits for role-plays themselves. As a facilitator, I divided them into 10 different groups and let them discuss the social issues/problems they had observed or experienced in their homes or communities and prepare the skits to be performed in the class. They soon discussed in the group, selected the issue, developed the skits, and assigned the roles for each other. Their issues were also diverse such as child abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction, family conflict, girls trafficking, early marriage, domestic violence, and so on. I encouraged them to prepare the best drama afterwards and perform in the school hall in front of all the students, teachers, and guardians. Probably, my statement might have created more pressure on them and thus, they took extra time for rehearsal. Most of them worked hard and finally performed well. They received compliments from the audience too. They expressed that they were more confident after a month-long practice although they were pressurized to do the best performance initially. Moreover, I realized that their participation in speaking and other classroom tasks also increased. Later, they started asking questions confidently when they were confused during the instruction.

After completion of that project, I prepared a presentation focusing on my classroom context, the problem I faced, intervention that I adopted for change, and the success I achieved. Firstly, I presented the findings among my colleagues in school. I found my colleagues excited to see the changes in my students caused by the project. That presentation also inspired other colleagues in the school because they adopted such interventions for solving their classroom problems. Secondly, I presented the findings at the international conference as well.  I got inspiration, from my friends who had already attended international conferences, to apply for the presentation. So, I developed a presentation abstract with the findings of the same project and applied it to IATEFL international conference 2016. They happily accepted my presentation proposal and awarded me a scholarship to travel and present my paper at the conference in the UK. It was a great opportunity for a classroom teacher like myself to attend and share my experience with the international community. It was only possible through my new intervention in the classroom. Finally, I wrote the reflection and sent it to the IATEFL voice newsletter and got it published in 2016.

I was excited to do such classroom interventions in the following years as well. In 2017, I developed another project to enhance the writing skills of grade eight students and succeeded to some extent. I again prepared the presentation proposal and submitted it to JALT international conference, Japan. It was accepted and supported by the organizer to travel to Japan and present my paper there. Being inspired by such a small but notable success in my career, I designed another project to address the classroom diversity of my students. I then developed the conference presentation proposal on how I addressed the classroom diversity and sent it to TESOL International Convention in the USA in 2017. They also accepted my presentation abstract with the scholarship to attend the TESOL Convention in Seattle, the USA, and present my paper. It was yet another opportunity of international exposure for me created through my tiny classroom intervention.

Later, I realized what I did in my classroom was none other than action research. My perception of action research completely changed after the realization that all the attempts of improving existing classroom situations through various teachers’ interventions were action researches. I used to think that research was beyond the access of teachers which would require specialized knowledge, skills, and practices. I was wrong because my experience mentioned above revealed that every teacher who approaches the real classroom problem with a new intervention strategy becomes a researcher. When I understood that action research means understanding a problem and solving it by oneself, I began to see every classroom problem from a researcher’s perspective, intervene and report to others for implication.

Understanding action research

Action research is understood and applied diversely according to the context since it is a research paradigm as well as a methodology (Goodnough, 2011).  For example, Smith and Rebolledo (2018), termed it as teacher research since it is the ‘research initiated and carried out by teachers into issues of importance to them in their own work’  / ’research done by teachers into issues which concern them’ (p.18). It means the research carried out by the teachers for addressing the problems that arise in the practice systematically collecting data, analyzing it, and sharing what is found. Action research can be understood by various terminologies based on practices as well, such as teacher research, classroom-based research, exploratory action research/ practice, participatory action research, and critical action research. However, its basic essence seems to be the same. For example, in action research what intervention is taken to improve the situation is highlighted whereas, in the exploratory action research, the focus is given to the exploration of the causes of the problem before taking action.

Action research can have various dimensions and purposes. For example, Rearick and Feldman’s (1999) framework of three dimensions such as theoretical orientation, purposes of action research, and the types of reflection helped me to understand action research as an emerging research trend. Its nature, again based on theoretical dimensions, is technical, practical, and emancipatory. As indicated by Noffke (1997), action research broadly serves three purposes: personal growth, professional growth, and political empowerment. In my career, firstly, it served as a tool to understand my students, the nature of the problem, and classroom context as well. Secondly, it worked as a tool for my professional development. For example, due to my practice of action research in the classroom, I traveled to foreign countries, attended conferences, learned, shared, and developed professional networking. Thirdly, action research informed me about the economic, social, gender, lingual, racial, and ethnic inequalities inside and outside of the classroom. I realize that action research empowers not only the researchers but also the students involved in the project.

Teacher research which is carried out by the teachers for teachers is practiced elsewhere in the forms of action research or exploratory practice (Hanks, 2019). As stated by Smith (2020b) practice of teacher research has provided me the platform to empower other teachers and enhance personal and professorial growth. Although the concept and the purpose of action research vary, the action research involves practitioners in the self-contained cycle like plan, action, observe and reflect. In any action research, this cycle repeats until the improvement occurs in the situation. That is the main reason why action research is regarded as participatory, cyclical, or recursive research. Keeping these four stages in a spiral at the center, we can find the solution for any problem in the classroom.

Teachers as the researcher in the classroom (Mertler, 2009) can learn the value of action research as empowerment of the participants, collaboration, knowledge acquisition, and change. First of all, as I have narrated above, the student participants are empowered through action research. For example, in my case mentioned above, the students were not able to speak with the teachers at the beginning but after the intervention, they expressed that they had a high level of confidence. It reveals that action research can empower the students. The researchers themselves get empowered after gaining insights from the course of action research. Secondly, it fostered a collaborative culture among the students and stakeholders. Collaboration, as one of the fundamental 21st-century skills every student requires to develop, can be developed through action research. Thirdly, action research served me as a reliable means to acquire knowledge about the learners, context and contents in the classroom. It proves that the researcher can acquire knowledge by being involved in the action research. Finally, action research brought about changes in my students. Students became successful to interact with their friends and teachers in the classroom after the completion of the action. It reveals that action research is change-oriented research.

Carrying out action research in Nepalese classroom contexts is not free from challenges. I have also observed and experienced various challenges as a teacher and researcher. The first challenge for a teacher is the motivation towards research. I found some younger teachers who were in their early careers comparatively more motivated. However, the teachers who were in their late careers less motivated in the process of action research. Another challenge is the understanding of action research and systematizing it. Many teachers might perceive action research as s tough job although they have been doing it unnoticeably in their practice. For example, I used to tackle my classroom problems with new interventions and improve my teaching. However, I had not understood it as research and documented it systematically for a long time. Later, I realized the essence of it. Similarly, managing time for doing action research can be the next challenge because teachers can be overloaded with teaching duties. As a result, they may not have enough time for preparation and exploration. Besides, collaboration with colleagues and administration, creating a research-oriented environment in the workplace, and updating oneself according to the changed academic scenario can also be a challenge for carrying out action research.

Conclusion 

Action research for teachers can be the best tool to groom personally and professionally. By exploring own classroom context, improving the existing situations, and empowering self and others through actions, a classroom teacher can contribute to the academia besides delivering course contents prescribed by the curricula. Moreover, action research provides the basis for a teacher to become a researcher, conference presenter, writer, and research mentor too. Although conducting action research requires teachers’ understanding, motivation, time, preparation, and dedication, it eventually supports them to transform themselves from a teacher to the researcher.

References

Goodnough, K. (2011). Examining the long‐term impact of collaborative action research on teacher identity and practice: the perceptions of K–12 teachers. Educational Action Research, 19(1), 73-86.

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Mertler, C. A. (2009). Action research: Teachers as researchers in the classroom. Sage.

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Author’s Bio:

Gobinda Puri is a lecturer of English at Janta Multiple Campus, Itahari. He is also the vice-chair in the NELTA Sunsari branch and the executive member in the Provincial committee, Province No. 1. Currently, he is pursuing his M.Phil. in English Education, at Nepal Open University. Besides teaching, he has interested in teacher research.