Teacher Research Paper: Research in Action--For Action

"Teacher researchers look for questions to research that can lead to a new vision of themselves as teachers and their students as learners."
--Ruth Hubbard and Brenda Power

Assignment: A teacher research paper of 3-5 pages (about 750-1250 words) written on computer. It is due Wednesday, December 16, at the beginning of class.

Audience: Our class (all students and professor) and Mrs. Morrell

Purpose:

Content: 4 parts

  1. Specific context: show what you noticed about your mini-class, what you thought, and how you acted at the time that led you to your research question.
  2. Your research question. Hubbard and Power's words* explain it well.
  3. Research: show what you discovered from 3-5 pertinent and current sources and your own reflections.
  4. Conclusions: apply the research/reflection to your question and show your insights/action (now or future) that follow from your context and research.

Form/genre: Formal paper in MLA style

*"Be specific in your concerns. Many teachers reject their first questions or broaden them needlessly. They don't always believe that their concerns are worthy of study. 'What works well in writing workshops?' is a question we've been presented with more than once by teacher researchers. This is a monumental question, too large for anyone to tackle. Sometimes we are shown specific questions by teacher researchers, such as 'How are Julie's perceptions of her role in writing response groups changing over time?' followed by 'But I know that's not important enough to study.' For too long, educational research has tried to answer big questions with short term, large scale studies that ignore the complexity of teacher and student interactions. It's all right for your research to start from a different point--individual students and their needs in your classroom. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to develop research procedures."

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