On the basis of full understanding, let us scientifically understand the meaning and characteristics of educational action research.
Second, the meaning and characteristics of action research method
1, what is the action research method?
Many researchers have expounded the definition of action research method, but it is the definition of its founder Lei Wen 1944 that fully and systematically reveals its essential connotation: "Research topics come from the needs of practical workers, research is carried out in practical work, and research is completed with the participation of practical workers and researchers. The research results are understood, mastered and implemented by practical workers, and the research aims to solve practical problems and improve social action.
Educational action research method is a research method for teachers to study the actual situation of their own classes and solve the problems in daily education and teaching under the guidance of researchers, so as to continuously improve education and teaching. It is a research method to seek the subject from the needs of educational work, and conduct research with the participation of practical workers and researchers in the actual work process, so that the research results can be understood and implemented by practical workers, thus achieving the purpose of solving practical problems and improving behavior.
Educational action research is not concerned with theoretical problems identified by theoretical researchers, but with practical problems that educational practitioners encounter every day and need to be solved urgently. Therefore, action research is not limited to a certain theoretical knowledge, but actively accommodates and utilizes experiences, knowledge, methods, technologies and theories that are conducive to solving practical problems and improving the quality of action, paying special attention to practitioners' understanding, feelings and experiences of problems. To sum up, there are three points:
The primary goal of educational action research is to improve the quality of action and solve practical problems.
The main form of educational action research is the combination of research process and action process.
Educational action research takes teachers' continuous reflection on their actual work as the basic means.
2. The concept of educational action research
Although educational action research is an educational research method, there are some theoretical assumptions or basic ideas behind its operational norms and specific practices.
(1) Teachers become researchers.
An important concept of educational action research is that "teachers are researchers", and teachers' work and research can and should be integrated. Buckham was an early advocate of teachers and researchers. He once expressed the view that research is not a proprietary field, but an attitude, which is not essentially different from education itself. In other words, the relationship between scientific research and teaching is a kind of "* * * complementary" relationship. Good teachers teach in research and learn in teaching. In other words, teachers should carry out educational theory research in the process of teaching practice, so that research and action can be integrated. That is, "to promote thinking by doing." It is also often called "learning by doing" in the new curriculum reform. Reflection and research in teaching and teaching in reflection and inquiry are effective ways for teachers to realize their professional development.
(2) Learning from experience
Experience is the cognitive achievement accumulated by individuals in practical activities. Dewey said that experience is the continuous interaction between individuals and the environment. Teachers' experience comes from two scenes, one is the school education scene and the other is the daily life scene. In the school education scene, teachers' experience comes from three sources: one is the teaching practice of teachers' own experience; The second is to observe other people's education and teaching experience; The third is to acquire the norms and behaviors contained in school culture. Teachers' experiential learning has two forms: spontaneous learning and conscious learning, in which conscious learning is teachers' reflection and reconstruction of experience. Educational action research is essentially an activity to improve and reorganize teachers' experience.
Teachers' professional knowledge includes "subject-oriented content knowledge" and "practice-oriented tacit knowledge" (tacit knowledge means "we know more than we can say"). There is a lot of tacit knowledge hidden in teachers' daily behavior and direct experience. Educational action research advocates that teachers become self-discoverers, knowledge explorers, potential developers and practical rational summoners through self-reflection and tacit knowledge.
(3) Pursuing practical rationality
Practical reason is also called "practical reason" The rationality of educational practice is the unity of the action, purpose and regularity of the educational subject, that is, the educational subject establishes the educational purpose under the premise of grasping the educational law, and serves the educational purpose with the educational purpose as the guide, and at the same time explores and controls the law in the process of realizing the educational purpose within the scope indicated by the educational purpose, so as to develop educational practice reasonably. So what kind of research is action research? Let's look at the scientific research works of four teachers:
The first teacher worked in a middle school, accumulated ten years' work and wrote a book "Principles of Quality Education". The teacher thinks that his book has ten theoretical breakthroughs, such as the understanding of the relationship between quality education and all-round development education, the analysis of the meaning of quality education, and the historical development track of quality education. It can be said that in this book of nearly 200 thousand words, a series of theoretical problems of quality education are discussed.
The second teacher wrote a paper on learning methods. First, he expounded Gagne's learning theory, introduced how Gagne's learning theory learned from the strengths of many schools and integrated it into his own theory, as well as Gagne's basic learning thoughts, and then described his basic views on students' learning formed on this basis, guiding students to master learning methods in the classroom teaching process, and the list is endless.
The third teacher wrote an article entitled "Grasping the Spirit of the Times and Developing Subjective Education". This paper talks about some "beneficial attempts" in teaching work, such as: promoting people's subjectivity and arousing people's subjective consciousness; Reform and optimize the curriculum system; Improve the teaching organization form; Improve teaching methods and modes.
The fourth teacher has accumulated a lot of teaching reflection notes, summed up a series of education and teaching cases, and formed his own understanding of education and teaching practice on this basis. In practice, she is always thinking about such a problem; How to make our education and teaching closer to the needs of students and the requirements of the new curriculum?
The research on the above four teachers can be analyzed as follows:
To some extent, the research of new teachers is basic research, aiming at exploring new knowledge, discovering new laws and explaining new relationships. Although primary and secondary school teachers can also get involved in this kind of research, they often get twice the result with half the effort because of the limitation of consulting materials, research time and thinking ability, and this kind of research is external to primary and secondary school teachers, so primary and secondary school teachers need to "start a new stove" for this kind of research, which is not necessarily related to their daily teaching practice. Judging from the books provided by this teacher, what he thinks is a theoretical breakthrough has been familiar to a great extent in academic circles; His originality has largely become a cliche in academic circles.
The second teacher's research is generally applied research. Applied research aims at applying the results of basic research to educational practice. In fact, this presupposes that the results of basic research are effective and can be put into practice. In this way, basic research is endowed with absolute authority intentionally or unintentionally. At the same time, in applied research, professional researchers and primary and secondary school teachers are separated from each other.
The third teacher's research seems to be a summary of experience, but it does not have the characteristics of strong pertinence, detailed introduction of experience and specific problems. It can only be said that it is an "abstract" summary of experience, and generally speaking, it is "speaking others' words with your own mouth".
In contrast, the fourth teacher's research is more desirable, which is largely the type of research that teachers should adopt. Teachers take their own education and teaching activities as the research object, constantly reflect on their own education and teaching behavior, so as to sum up their educational wisdom and improve their education and teaching level. The problems of this kind of research are generated in the actual work situation, and the research process is based on the actual situation, and it is reviewed and revised at any time according to the needs of the actual situation. This kind of research is teachers' conscious, systematic and continuous exploration and reflection on their own practice. While highlighting the "research" characteristics of teachers' practice, the role of teachers as researchers is highlighted, and the requirements for teachers' self-reflection run through the research process. This kind of self-reflection is a learning process for teachers and an effective way to find real-time solutions to situational problems in educational practice. The research done by the fourth teacher is an action research that needs to be vigorously promoted and carried out in primary and secondary schools.
3. Characteristics of action research methods
(A) the "action" characteristics of action research methods
Action research method can be further understood around its following "action" characteristics.
1, for the purpose of research, is "research for action"
Traditional research aims at discovering universal laws and is "research for theory". On the one hand, the purpose of this research discourages the majority of teachers who have the most say in education on the front line, on the other hand, it also makes the beautiful educational theory only stay in written records. Although some people try to make teachers a transit point for transforming educational theory into educational practice, this view overestimates the relationship between educational theory and practice. The best combination of theory and practice requires the close combination of action and research. Action research breaks the limitation of traditional research in research purpose, and its fundamental purpose is not for theoretical output and the discovery of universal laws, but for the improvement of action. Improvement of practice. But this does not mean that it despises theory, but that it pays attention to guiding action and improving practice with advanced theory. It is studied to solve practical problems. The primary goal of the research is to improve the quality and efficiency of education and teaching, and improve the education and teaching work. This is not only the fundamental motive force for front-line teachers to carry out educational research, but also the fundamental purpose of educational research.
Of course, action research puts solving practical problems in the first place, which does not mean that action research is only satisfied with solving problems and does not discuss theoretical success. Since action research is a kind of research, we should think rationally about the process and effect of action. On the basis of practice, make your own theoretical contribution to a certain extent and seek truth. In the philosophical sense, action research embodies the unity of understanding the world and transforming it. In the late 1980s, Mr. Liu Jinghai, the headmaster of Shanghai Zhabei No.8 Middle School, conducted an experimental study on "successful education". After several years of unremitting efforts, remarkable results have been achieved. On the one hand, the students in this school have achieved their success goals to varying degrees, and their quality has generally improved; On the other hand, based on the practical experience of successful education, this paper studies the connotation, characteristics, essence and implementation of successful education, and constructs a successful education theory with local characteristics. This is a successful example of action research. (Give examples of successful education)
2. From the object of study, it is "research on action"
Action research is to seize the object worthy of attention in action as a research problem. Other studies will also study action, but not as specific as action research. Action research focuses on the improvement of students' actions, but it realizes the improvement of students' actions by focusing on the improvement of teachers' or other school educators' actions. It should analyze the problem, put forward strategies and methods to solve the problem and finally solve the problem. But other kinds of research often only focus on one aspect. Some just investigate and analyze the status quo; Some may further put forward ideas to solve the problem, but whoever solves the problem doesn't care if it can be solved. Action research is a one-stop service, which combines research and problem solving. It has the following characteristics: (1) directness. The problem must come from the teacher's own education and teaching practice, and it is the teacher's own direct experience and feeling. For example, Zhang, a math teacher in a rural middle school in Chaoyang District, Beijing, conducted an experimental study on improving junior high school students' math operation skills by algebraic poker games, and its research object was the problems of poor math operation skills and weariness of learning math. Therefore, teachers who carry out action research must collect information extensively, find problems and conduct research. (2) particularity. The problem or research object is usually limited to a school or a class in a school, which belongs to the running situation or class situation of a school and shows the characteristics of a school or class in a certain area. For example, the problems in the experimental study of extraordinary education in Beijing No.8 Middle School are only the problems existing in the education of dozens of extraordinary children in the experimental class of extraordinary children in this school, which is very special. The particularity of action research requires people to be cautious in the scope of application, to analyze more, to listen to a wide range of opinions and to overcome subjective judgments when evaluating their own research results. (3) Microscopy. Most of the research objects are specific micro-problems in education and teaching practice. The scope of the problem is small, the structure is simple and there are few related factors. In addition, the aforementioned topics such as "Experimental Research on Algebraic Poker Games to Improve Junior High School Students' Mathematical Operation Skills" are microscopic studies in school teaching. Perhaps some people dismiss this microscopic problem and think that it is not educational research. It seems that those big and empty topics are valuable. In fact, this is a misunderstanding of educational research. Although macro research is important, the solution to the problem must ultimately fall on the micro-operation level. Without micro-research, the research results at the macro-speculative level are just a hypothesis, and its authenticity is still an unresolved issue. Micro-problems are small, but they can be seen in small. The study of "Nutrition+Exercise Compound Prescription Experiment" solves the poor eating habits and exercise problems of primary school students in our school, but it is related to improving the nutritional status, health and physique of primary school students. Action research pays attention to doing and pursues real progress bit by bit, which embodies the real value of educational research.
3. From the research environment, it is "research in action"
Action research is neither conducted in the laboratory nor in the library. The environment of action research is the actual environment of teachers' work. Teachers find problems, analyze and study problems and solve problems in their own educational and teaching actions, so as to improve their work. This is a combination of educational research and educational action. For example, the experiment of "Nutrition and Exercise Compound" conducted by Beijing Fengtai Experimental School in 1994 studied the bad eating habits of primary school students in this school. The scope of the problem can be summarized into two key words: primary school students and eating habits. The structure of the problem can be expressed as: cognition (lack of nutrition knowledge), attitude (like to eat delicious food) and behavior (picky eaters, partial eclipse, anorexia, eating snacks, etc.). The related factors of the problem are: school support (education, management, food processing equipment, personnel training), social support (technical guidance from city government, scientific research institutions and food technology companies) and parental support (cognition, attitude and education of children).
4. From the researcher's point of view, it is "the actor conducts the research"
The people who carry out action research are the educational actors in schools-the majority of school educators. They study while working, and apply the research results to the improvement work, thus combining the exploration and application of research results. Compared with other kinds of research, the producers and users of research results are all integrated, which is unique. Research is doing research in daily school life and real classroom teaching environment. Because the process of education and teaching is a complex and changeable dynamic process, teachers should always reflect on the problems in the process of action. Professional researchers must also go deep into the reality of education and classroom teaching and study new problems with teachers. And according to the actual situation of the action, adjust the plan at any time, improve the action, and solve the problem in benign changes. Make the working process of education and teaching a research process, make the research process a rational working process, and realize the perfect combination of research and action. The combination strategy of action research makes up for the gap between theory and practice in educational research, and makes the research receive immediate results.
5. From the perspective of research scope, it is the field of action involved by researchers.
A researcher does not study the objects outside the scope of work, but the specific people, things and things involved in the work. The first research achievement, the solution to the problem and the experience gained from it, is only valid within their specific scope of work and may not be universally applicable. The research process is systematic and open. Systematic performance is that the development of action research has general operating procedures. Although the expression is different, everyone thinks that the process of action research is a spiral development process, and it is an operating system composed of four links: planning, implementing actions, observing and reflecting.
6. In terms of research process and method, it is adjustment while doing.
Action research should change the object through the intervention of researchers' actions. There is no strict procedure for the process and method of action intervention, nor can it be completely set in advance. It is flexible or dynamic and can be modified by researchers in practice according to the situation. Therefore, it requires teachers to have sensitivity to practical problems and the ability to adjust research methods or priorities in time. This is similar to the treatment of diseases in traditional Chinese medicine. Through the patient's reaction and changes after taking the medicine, the prescription was adjusted many times, and finally the purpose of cure was achieved.
7. From the research results, it is an improvement and development of action.
The improvement and development of action have double meanings. First, the improvement and development of students' actions: learning behavior, moral behavior and social behavior; The second is the improvement and development of teachers' actions: the improvement of teachers' professional knowledge and ability. Because of this, in recent years, action research has been paid more and more attention as a way of teachers' "professional development".
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the action research method is not so much a research method as a research form.
Comparison between educational action research and traditional educational research. It can be compared from four dimensions: research subject, research field, research means and research purpose. As shown in the following table:
Comparison between traditional education research and action research
Action Research on Traditional Education Research
Who are the professors, experts and scholars, front-line teachers and presidents of research universities?
Where learning variables can be effectively controlled in the environment, schools and classrooms.
How to do research, prompt the causal relationship between variables with quantitative methods, and describe and understand educational events with qualitative methods.
Why do you do research and put forward theories that can be popularized, publish works to understand the situation, improve practice and drive innovation?
We now advocate school-based research, which is basically carried out in the way of improving experience, such as attending classes, attending classes and evaluating classes, collective narrative and case development, and summing up special experiences. Compared with educational action research, these research methods are mainly different in the degree of "standardization". Educational action research emphasizes the positioning of professional concepts and causality on specific issues, thus forming a relatively clear and reasonable research framework, and the writing of research results is relatively standardized. However, there is a lack of summary of teaching experience in this respect. Sometimes the articles written by teachers give people the impression that they are not "theoretical", which may be mainly due to these reasons.
The difference between educational action and teaching experience summary
Summary of teaching experience of action research in research process education
The presentation of questions attaches importance to the reference role of theory and curriculum standards, and the research has a strong sense of questions. The preliminary investigation of the questions is subjective and arbitrary, lacking theoretical support and the focus of the questions is vague.
The attribution of problems attaches importance to the enlightening role of theory and experience, and is ultimately based on empirical investigation, mainly relying on subjective inference and speculation, and sometimes even proposing measures and actions without proper attribution.
Measures and action measures are based on investigation and attribution, which are embodied in classroom teaching and class management actions; Pay attention to the collection of morning and daily data. Traditional teaching and research activities mainly focus on this part, such as combining measures with lesson preparation and teaching plans. The collection of daily data includes classroom records, after-class notes, teaching diaries, etc. The demonstration and exchange of measures and actions will also involve activities such as demonstration class, classroom evaluation and classroom demonstration.
Evaluation and reflection attach importance to the evaluation and reflection of the effectiveness of measures and actions on the basis of empirical observation, which is relatively lacking. If there is, it also lacks the support of empirical materials, often with more positive comments and less reflective elements.
(B) the basic types of educational action research
Summarize the following basic types according to practice.
1, case study
That is, teachers turn their focus to review and reflect on their own educational experiences and lessons, and conduct research around a large number of vivid educational cases.
Case studies of teachers are similar to those of doctors, lawyers and military affairs. Through case studies, teachers can engage in educational research while improving their work, and organically combine "action" with "research".
To conduct a case study, teachers should first write the problems found in education and the whole process of dealing with them as cases, then discuss and analyze the cases, sum up certain educational strategies through the study of similar cases, and then form a "case study report" on this basis. Case study can fully respect and absorb teachers' existing educational experience and stimulate teachers' interest in educational research.
2. Research on the problem
Teachers will encounter difficulties every day in their work, which may become the research objects or topics of education. Teachers engage in educational research, starting from practical problems in their work and aiming at solving practical problems. This kind of action research aimed at improving education and teaching is called "problem research". After teachers find problems that can be studied, they need to make clear the scope and nature of the research topic and look for various perspectives of problem research; Then, through observation, investigation or literature research, analyze the cause or crux of the problem; Then, the ideas and schemes to solve the problems are formed, and the research scheme is implemented, and systematic evidence is collected to explain the specific effects of the educational measures proposed in the research scheme; Finally, the self-reflection of action researchers and the discussion with colleagues have sublimated the research results.
Problem research is an action research that integrates "education" and "research".
3. Cooperative research
"Cooperative research" generally refers to the cooperative research between teachers and educational theorists in the field of action research, but it certainly does not exclude the cooperative research between teachers. There are different ways of cooperative research: theoretical workers set up projects, teachers cooperate with experiments or provide data; Teachers set up projects and theoretical workers guide them; Teachers and theoretical workers jointly set up projects, and theoretical workers make plans, which are mainly implemented by teachers-different ways and proper operation will have certain effects.
The relationship between teachers and educational theorists in cooperative research is equal, cooperative, complementary and mutually beneficial. Teachers have rich practical experience and research materials, and theoretical workers have more research experience and theoretical resources. Therefore, in the process of cooperative research, theoretical workers can share teachers' educational experience and find new theoretical growth points from these vivid educational experiences; Teachers can also share the research experience and theoretical resources of theoretical workers to make their research more standardized. Therefore, one of the values of cooperative research is that it is a learning process in itself, and it is also a bridge between educational theory and practice.
After we have a full understanding of education and scientific research, we must not rush into it, otherwise we will go into the misunderstanding of scientific research. Only by strictly following the procedures can we embark on a bright road.
Third, the general procedure of action research.
Action research is a spiral development process, and each spiral development circle includes four interrelated and interdependent links: planning-action-observation-reflection. The above four links are constantly circulating, and each cycle has been improved.
1, plan
Planning is the first link of action research, including the analysis of problems and the thinking of solving problems.
(1) problem
Planning begins with the understanding and analysis of problems. Researchers must first make clear the current situation of the school, realize the problems existing in education and teaching, and generate the demand for effectively solving this problem; Then further analyze the nature and scope of the problem, analyze the important factors that restrict the problem solving, and whether the school teachers have the knowledge and ability to solve the problem. In the actual education and teaching work, teachers should find out the problems existing in the actual work through their own observation and thinking. Finding problems is the starting point of scientific research, and problems promote and guide research. How can we find the problem keenly?
First of all, we should observe the educational phenomena around us with an active exploration attitude, including what is happening in education and teaching (students' ideological and moral performance, academic performance and physical and mental development, etc.). ) and the state changes after an action is implemented. In scientific research, observation is a purposeful and conscious perceptual cognitive activity. Observation in educational scientific research is a special observation of educational phenomena with purpose. Whether a researcher can keenly observe the phenomenon in front of him. This depends not only on his attitude, but also on his thought, knowledge and theoretical background. People with the same phenomenon, different concepts and different theoretical backgrounds may have completely different understandings. The debate about "Heliocentrism" and "geocentric theory" in the history of science is a good example. Similarly, in education and teaching, it is common to have different views on the same educational phenomenon. For example, in mathematical operations, it is often seen that some calculation problems can be simplified by algorithms, but most students use conventional methods to calculate, which is more troublesome. How to treat the phenomenon that often happens in this mathematical operation? Zankov, an educator in the former Soviet Union, observed this universal phenomenon, understood and analyzed it from the perspective of children's development, and thought it reflected the difference of students' mathematical operation ability. Similar examples are too numerous to mention. It can be seen that ideas, knowledge and theoretical background have certain guiding and screening effects on a person's observation. As Goethe pointed out, "what a man sees is only what he knows". Therefore, it is the most important thing to improve the ability of researchers to find problems, strengthen the research of modern educational theory and change the traditional educational concept. Secondly, we need to think about the phenomenon, make a preliminary analysis and think. What's his problem? If a primary school science teacher says that the earth is round, he asks his students, "Do you understand?" The students said in unison, "I see." Then the teacher drew a circle on the blackboard to represent the earth, and then asked the students, where do you live? Draw a picture. Therefore, many students draw their positions above the circle, not in the middle. The teacher asked strangely, "Why do you draw like this?" The student replied, "Draw other places and people will fall." Through this teaching phenomenon, teachers realize that students think they understand what they say, but they don't really understand it. Knowledge that students have not experienced and felt cannot be considered as truly understood. If the result of this thinking is further deepened, it is possible to put forward an action research plan to improve the teaching of natural courses and improve the learning quality of students.
Secondly, we should pay attention to defining the problem.
Researchers choose research topics from the problems found, understand the nature and scope of the problems to be solved, diagnose the causes of the problems, and lay the foundation for taking appropriate actions and effectively solving the problems. If group research is adopted, it is best to clarify the problem through collective discussion, so as to give full play to the collective wisdom, acquire knowledge and decide the priority research issues.