Action Research FAQ

From Eduwiki

Students have lots of questions about doing action research. Here are some of the ones we hear repeatedly:

Control Groups?

Q: Originally I was going to have a control group.  Can I change my mind?  
I don't think I need one.  I figure since I'm doing a pre-test I can 
determine whether or not the students had improved through their projects 
when I look at the post project data.

It is possible to do the study without the control group but you cant simply rely on pre- and post- tests. Pre- and post- tests will tell you that there was an improvement - but we always expect to see some sort of improvement. There are still two questions:

A) is this improvement a lot or a little? B) was the improvement do to the portfolios or other parts of the class?

The control group helps you answer both questions. Without a control group you can answer (A) by comparing this class to past classes or other teachers classes using the post test only. This requires the assumption that the classes start about the same level - sometimes that is not a good assumption.

For question (B) you need to get some information from the students about what they are doing. This can be observations, surveys, looking at classwork, interviews etc. You need to collect data that your intervention is changing the way students think/work/engage in the course. This requires collecting more and more detailed data which is harder to analyze than post tests. But this can also tell you a lot more about the learning process.