What I have learned about action reasearch, and how you might use it.

Action research is different from traditional educational research.  Traditional educational research is developed through a researcher obtaining factual information about certain issues, then drawing a conclusion based on the data.  Action research is not obtained through a researcher developing his own conclusions from data obtained by a third party.  It is developed from an actual administrator and their experiences from their campuses.  Action research is the ability of an administrator to look back on previous experiences throughout their career as an educational leader and make adjustments to how they handled those experiences.  If the educational leader feels like any situations could have been handled differently, they can make adjustments in their decisions the next time the situation occurs.  There are many methods that can help you become an action researcher.  The methods can be through colleagues, professional learning communities, Superintendent/District meetings, and university coursework.  It takes time to develop as an effective action researcher.  This is due to the lack of experiences needed to compare current experiences to.  As a leader develops and has more on the job training, they will have had more experiences to reflect on so they can develop their action research.  When more experienced educational leaders have developed there action research, they can share their experiences with novice administrators and use it as a learning tool to develop better habits for learning administrators such as myself.