[00:01] SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.
[00:16] SPEAKER_02:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Richard Sagor. Dick is founder of the Institute for the Study of Inquiry in Education and has extensive experience in consulting and educational leader preparation at the university level. And he's the author of numerous books and articles on school reform and action research.
[00:39] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:41] SPEAKER_02:
Dick, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:43] SPEAKER_01:
It's great to be here, Justin. I participated with Principal Center, and I've been an excited... champion of principal centers, and this is a real honor for me.
[00:53] SPEAKER_02:
Well, thanks very much. An honor to have you on the show. And we're here today to talk about the Action Research Guidebook, a process for pursuing equity and excellence in education. And since action research is one of those terms that we toss around quite a bit in our field, I wonder if you could start by clarifying for us, what is action research in your view?
[01:14] SPEAKER_01:
Be happy to. I define it as it is research or one might say an inquiry conducted by the person or people doing the work on their own work for the purpose of improving their work. So that's a three part thing is that the person doing action research has to be the actor. I can't do research on your work, Justin, but I do research on my work. And I do it for the purpose of improving my future work. So it's conducted by the actor on his or her own action and for the purpose of improving their action.
[02:03] SPEAKER_02:
Perfect. So it's kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum from, say, the type of research that John Hattie does, which is meta-analyses of meta-analyses of studies done by researchers on students or educators. We're talking about action research in terms of improving our own work, looking at our own practice, and engaging in an inquiry process to improve that work.
[02:24] SPEAKER_01:
Exactly. And the only thing that where I would expand out on that one is that it can be done by individual actor, the individual teacher, practitioner, the individual principal, or it can be done collaboratively. It could be our department in a high school doing action research together as a team on work that we are doing. So we can improve our work. It could be done by a committee. It could be done by a grade level.
[02:53]
It could be done just by two teaching peers. So it doesn't have to be a singular pursuit, but it is an examination of our own action to improve our own actions.
[03:05] SPEAKER_02:
So in considering action research as one of many possible activities that educators could engage in, what drew you to action research as opposed to, say, PLCs or just regular department meetings? We have lots of different ways of working together. What kind of called your name when you got into action research initially?
[03:26] SPEAKER_01:
That's a very good point. I was thinking about it because when you mention PLCs, there is virtually no reason for a PLC not to engage in action research. In fact, if the PLC has got a good chemistry and culture to it, it's a great place to do action research. But there is a significant difference in the thing that pulled me into action research as opposed to many of these other approaches to collaboration. And that is the power of action research to provide a positive reinforcement for continuous improvement. One of the things that happens with action research is that we are in a constant feedback loop, seeing what is succeeding and what is not succeeding.
[04:21]
And as we're finding what's succeeding, we do more of it. That is reinforcing. We see that with everything from athletes find it reinforcing to practice and they collect data. And as they collect data, they see that they're getting better and that gets them to practice more. It just feeds into itself. It's reinforcing to have positive feedback about what's working and it makes you want to invest more.
[04:48]
Likewise, the reverse is true. that if you're working in a data vacuum or in a vacuum where you don't have confidence in the quality of the data that you're getting, it is very hard for that to serve as motivation to persevere. A teacher who has is working so hard. It just you know how incredibly hard it is to teach today. And if you're doing that and at the end of the day, you go home and saying to yourself, did it make any difference? I mean, I'm just worn out.
[05:26]
What difference did it make? And if you don't feel an answer to that, it's hard to get up that energy and the creativity to go at it tomorrow and try to do even better. But if a person is going home and saying, oh man, I see what worked. This thing was so much better than it was yesterday. This gives me some ideas of what I can do tomorrow. It gives you energy to go attack it the next day.
[05:56]
And so what I was seeing is that a lot of the things that we do in the name of collaboration actually takes energy out of our teachers. Where what I was seeing in action research is the data that comes back through that process actually re-energizes them. And through that empowerment, you end up with energy to move forward instead of frustration that pulls you back.
[06:18] SPEAKER_02:
I love that. So it's kind of like an upward spiral versus a downward spiral. You know, if we get that feedback, we make those improvements, our self-efficacy gets a boost because we see that we're getting better. And then that prompts us to invest more energy in improvement. And then that has a further boost on our self-efficacy. So it's kind of a kind of a rich get richer kind of scenario with improvement.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. Totally is. It's yes, it's absolutely. And I love your choice of terms is right on there. It's a self-efficacy thing. And as you feel more and more efficacious, you invest more.
[06:51]
One of the things about some of the other forms of collaboration and and it's really how that they're done. But sometimes, you know, if we as a principal, we're just kind of listen in and in the faculty room. We aren't hearing teachers saying, oh, oh, great, we're going to have a PLC tomorrow morning. It's often they're looking at these as things that they have been told to do and assigned to do. And there's, even with our most positive teachers, there's a level of resentment when you've got a job which is already taking, you know, 70 to 90 hours a week from you. When you're being asked to do something that you don't see, and more importantly than see, you don't feel the return on investment.
[07:33]
And the thing that happens with action research is that they are in possession of the return on the investment. One example I like to give a place where action research exists in every high school in America with teachers passionately devoted to the action research process. And they're not getting paid for it. They're not required to do it, but they deal themselves into it. And the example is your football coaching staff. They set a set of objectives, what they want those kids to be able to accomplish.
[08:09]
They set up lesson plans for the whole week and they execute those lesson plans. And then Friday night, they do a performance assessment. And what they do is they collect data. They collect the most valid or reliable data imaginable. They video the whole thing. And Saturday morning, nobody cares.
[08:29]
They're not on contract. No one's telling them they have to do it. All the coaches show up and tear through this data, which is basically the data on the game from Friday night is data on how effective they were teaching their lessons the past week. And from that, they determine, OK, how can we improve our our teaching next week? And they use that data to create new practice plans, and then they do the other week, and then they do another data collection on Friday night. And all one needs to do is to watch them and see just what you're saying, that self-efficacy, how reinforcing it is.
[09:14]
And that's the type of energy we want to get into the endeavor of all of our teachers.
[09:21] SPEAKER_02:
Well, let's get into that four-stage action research process then. You said in action research, the researcher is the practitioner who is doing research on their own practice for the purpose of improving it. And you've broken that into four stages. What are those four stages of action research?
[09:38] SPEAKER_01:
The first of the stages is developing a vision, which is to say, where is I want to see the kids an individual student, if you're working with them, the class, just what success would look like. For the football coach, that is the game ends, the clock ends, and there's more points on our side of the scoreboard than on their side of the scoreboard. It could be for me, all of my kids effectively writing a coherent five paragraph essay. It could be a vision of a class working harmoniously as a group. It doesn't matter if it's an affective vision, a vision of how the kids are going to feel, of what kids are going to know or do, but I've got a really crystal clear vision of that.
[10:30]
The second one is once you have the vision, is developing a theory of action. If I've got a vision of where I want to see my kids or our school or this class be, at some point in time. If I'm already getting them there, it's not a worthwhile thing to do action research on. The only reason I'm doing action research is because in the past, in spite of my best efforts or our best efforts as a faculty, we haven't quite gotten to the promised land. So the theory stage, the theory of action is what do we think or what do I think needs to happen how do i think the process needs to work what do i think needs to be added to get us to just achieve this vision the third one is data collection so what i've done on the first on the first two is i've got a vision where i want to see the kids or the class be um then i have my
[11:41]
Let's say my vision is that we're a harmonious class, that we work together as a team, that the kids support each other, and that it's a family environment. And then as I work through my theory, my theory of action has things with class meetings, feedback that's provided to students, a whole set of activities that we're going to do to make the class this more harmonious, productive place. Then stage three, which is data collection, is while we're on this process of executing my theory, the theory is really, you might think of it as an elaborate set of lesson plans. What data do I need to collect and what information and behavior do I have to monitor as we're doing this to know how well it's going?
[12:39]
Example I might give about this data collection with action research might be with a physician. You go to the doctor and you have a condition. The doctor says there's a treatment regime that if we follow over two months should take care of this condition. You don't just have the doctor say, well, so come back in two months and tell me how it went. chances are what the doctor's doing is monitoring how effective the treatment's being while we're engaged in the treatment. The problem with a lot of our assessments in schools is even if we have a great plan to improve our reading performance and test scores, if the only data that we collect is that annual testing, it's too late to make those adjustments, the mid-course adjustments.
[13:33]
And then the final stage is analysis and reporting. So we've done the work. We know where we want it to go. We've come up with a theory on how to get there. That's stage two. Stage three, we've collected the data as we've gone.
[13:51]
Now we've finished the process, and what we want to do is say, What did this data tell us? In what ways did our theory work exactly as we wanted it to and got us right to the promised land? If it did, we're happy campers. Chances are you don't get to the promised land in the first shot. We'll find out some things really work nicely, and we want to continue to do that, maybe refine them some more. We may find some other things that didn't work so well.
[14:23]
And so what comes out of stage four in the analysis of the data is a new revised theory of action. So it's really moving in a circle. that my vision stays the same. Usually the vision stays exactly the same until it's achieved. For me, the vision is always...
[14:45]
wonderful things happening for all the kids and once that happens in an area great i can move on to another area but it's not that i'm constantly refining and trying to get better with each iteration so what happens after stage four is that brings me back around to what i can now revise my theory of action and then go back into taking action uh collecting the data and doing the analysis What's nice about this also in terms of, as you mentioned, the efficacy cycle as it cycles up, what happens is I can take those theories of action, which I usually have people do in a visual illustration, and you can put them in sequence and you can actually visually see your own growth and development.
[15:38]
This is what I thought two years ago. Then I did this research and see how it refined my understandings and the way I organized this class. And then I did another round. And it's, again, that sense of looking at, wow, I've come a long way. And that's the thing that by doing it as a four-stage process, we get out of it is that chance to see the growth over time. The last thing that I didn't mention, we include it in the book under the fourth stage, which is the analysis and action planning, is the reporting of action research.
[16:21]
As a school leader, what I love to have in my building, because I want the building to be a learning community, is to create opportunities for people, for the teachers and the teams of teachers to be sharing their action research with their colleagues. And what we want to do is create a culture and an atmosphere in the school where it's normal for people to share, hey, I want to share with you this cool thing that I found and it worked for me. And just as comfortable saying, I want to share with you about this thing that blew up on me. And this idea of the founder of the principal center, Roland Barthes, once made the comment or many times made the comment that they were a set of one room schoolhouses joined by a corridor.
[17:14]
because schools become such a private place that teachers don't share what's going on with each other. And you can use this wonderful actual research that's going on to change that entire culture, that this is a learning community where everybody is exploring matters of significant concern to them and their students, and we're learning that from each other.
[17:37] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. That idea of a learning organization where because we're articulating our theories of action, we are sharing our results. We are being disciplined about how we collect data. I mean, I think that's so powerful when as an organization, we can say we're engaged in this continual process of inquiry, going through these cycles to move toward that common vision. And one thing that I appreciate about your work, Dr. Segor, is your commitment to equity that, you know, the vision is not, well, our test scores will go up five points, but the vision, you know, even just in that example that I think you probably came up with on the fly, you know, all students will be able to, you know, do whatever.
[18:16]
I wonder if you could talk for a
[18:22] SPEAKER_01:
One of the big things I think with action research and a reason why it's so important is that it's a step towards our treating teachers more as professionals than as blue collar workers. And one of the things about action. I think almost by definition with professionals, is that we want universal success. You know, the lawyer wants to win every case. The doctor wants to cure every patient and ameliorate any problems. And teachers are no different from that.
[18:59]
I think that every one of them walks into their classroom their first day of teaching and says, They want to teach all the kids and they want every kid to be successful. And what happens, I think, over time, because of some of the structures that we put in place in school, it's where they may start saying to themselves, that's unrealistic. and start accepting that the best we can do, given the families, given this, given whatever, is that hopefully the great majority will succeed, but there will be some percent that will not. That goes against, I think, the core beliefs of practically every single person who went into the classroom. I think they went into the classroom and every one of us administrators went in because we wanted everyone to succeed.
[19:52]
So what happens with using the action research process, it gives the teacher reason to believe, to have that faith again. And the reason for it is because let's say I'm a teacher who's having success with 90% of my kids. And I start doing action research because it's bugging me that These few kids who have certain learning issues just haven't been getting it. And so I theorize how I might be able to be more successful with them. And I carry out the theory and collect the data and it starts working better. And I realize I've now gotten up to 92% success.
[20:40]
So I don't accept that. Then next year it's exciting because I can go, wait, now how can I tweak this some more and bring in those girls who are having this, uh, difficulty with this content? And I make another adjustment and then it's up to 94%. And, and what it's, doing is it's renewing the enthusiasm I had for teaching when I first went into the classroom. Now, again, I know realistically, just like the doctor knows, the doctor probably will not cure everyone. But what makes the doctor feel good is that they're becoming better.
[21:22]
Each year, their protocols succeed with more patients. They're learning and developing techniques which assist more. And while it may be elusive to get to that place where virtually all disease is cured, the sense that I am working on my life's work, which is, you know, improving health outcomes for everyone. And I am getting closer and closer to being there is reminds the doctor why they got involved. And that's what I find is happening with action research. It's not so much that we're preaching.
[22:03]
We have to, as school leaders, be preaching to our teachers about why they should value equity, why they should want all kids to do excellently. I think that that belief and value set is probably already present in the overwhelming number of our teachers. And what we need to do is to find structures which enable them to get back in touch with those feelings that they came into the profession with in the first place.
[22:32] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Dick, I think this is a very inspiring vision of action research and the potential that it has to, you know, reach those students that we're not currently reaching and engage educators in an efficacy building process of continuous improvement. And I know you have a lot of experience in training school leaders and knowing that you're speaking to school leaders today on Principal Center Radio. If you could wave a magic wand and get school leaders everywhere to do one particular thing, what would that be?
[23:00] SPEAKER_01:
I'll tell you what I'm going to do, Justin. I'm going to give you two because this is so important. We should have two things instead of one. And these would be the two. I would encourage school leaders, and I'm thinking principals and vice principals particularly, to conduct action research themselves and do it transparently in front of the faculty. So in other words, what I'm doing is, for example, I might say, I want our faculty meetings to be valuable experiences for you.
[23:33]
So I'm going to do action research on my facilitation of faculty meetings. and I do every one of the steps. I share with them how I would love to see us working together as a faculty, the vision. I share my theory, and my data collection is that I get feedback from them, among other things, at the end of each faculty meeting. And then I begin the next meeting saying, this is...
[24:00]
what I learned from your feedback at the last meeting, these are the things about my leadership I am changing now based on this data and this feedback. And the value of that is not just the modeling of the process. In fact, the smallest part is the modeling of the process. The biggest part is what you will be doing as a school leader. You will be publicly learning about from things that didn't go as you had hoped. And rather than being upset about that, you'll be thankful for having now learned this so that you can be better in the future.
[24:41]
And rather than that diminishing you in the eyes of the people you are leading, It builds you up because it shows them that learning is is not something to be feared. Putting oneself under the microscope is normative in this place. The second thing I said to be to the second one is to use faculty meeting time. My own bias is to do it exclusively. But if you have to use it for other things, okay. But as much as possible, use your faculty meeting time for the sharing of faculty action research.
[25:23]
When I was a principal, what I told the faculty is, I respect your time, so I will not ever have you come to a meeting where you're hearing something that you could have read. So we'll have a faculty bulletin, which says staff bulletin on the top. When that goes in your mailbox, that is as good, in my opinion, that's as good as read. I don't need to have you sitting in front of me. If I put it in your mailbox, I know you've got the information. I know you've read the information.
[25:50]
In exchange for your promising me that, I will never bring you to a meeting that isn't requiring your full intellectual participation. And then I like to use the meetings for people and teams to share what they're learning through their practice. And the thing that I in doing that also is that I'm encouraging people to share their action research that ended up being dead ends. ended up showing them things that didn't work. Because when they're modeling learning from things that didn't work out, they're modeling the best part about being a learning community. And then in time, faculty can move to a point where people are comfortably sharing the things that went famously in their rooms.
[26:41]
The reality is in many schools, given the culture, People aren't going to want to stand up and say, I want to share with the rest of you the wonderful thing I did with my kids. But people go, oh, who died and made you God? But in time, what people come to appreciate and realize that I call it all data are our friend. Any data we have. that helps inform our understanding of our work is helpful.
[27:10] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. Whether it's a success or a failure, you know, if we've gotten into it, we've analyzed it, we've learned from it, that creates that virtuous cycle that we've been talking about. Totally. You got it. So the book is The Action Research Guidebook, A Process for Pursuing Equity and Excellence in Education. And the new third edition is out now.
[27:31]
Dr. Sagor, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.
[27:34] SPEAKER_01:
Thank you, Justin. It started as an honor and it ended up being a pleasure. So it's an honor and a pleasure. Thank you very much. Likewise. Likewise.
[27:42] SPEAKER_00:
And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.
[27:47] SPEAKER_02:
So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dr. Richard Segor? One thing that I really was impressed by was the clarity of that four stage inquiry cycle. And if you know my background, I was a middle school science teacher and did my student teaching at the high school level. And that basic process of engaging in inquiry, of engaging in the process of generating a hypothesis and testing that hypothesis and analyzing the data and communicating the results, I mean, that is basic to science. And yet in the professional world and in our personal lives, it's something that we almost never do.
[28:23]
And I think what we do instead is we tend to try a bunch of stuff and then we reflect on how we feel about it, but we don't apply the rigor of the process that Dr. Segor described. We don't go through the trouble and the hassle of analyzing our results and figuring out what worked and what didn't, and then repeating that inquiry process. So I know you have a lot of improvement efforts going on in your school. You probably have PLCs, you probably have strategic planning, you probably have lots of different things that you're working toward. And whether you formally adopt something that you call an inquiry process or not, whether you have a particular approach to staff meetings that matches what Dr. Sagar talked about from his experience as a principal, what I want to challenge you to do is apply that scientific form of thinking where we are.
[29:14]
looking rigorously at our theory of action, we're looking rigorously at our hypothesis, and then we're implementing, we're running the experiment, so to speak, to see what's working, we're analyzing our results, we're talking about them, we're sharing the successes and the failures, because that's where the learning comes from. I want to challenge you to apply that scientific mindset and scientific perspective and scientific method to all of the work that you do as a school, because that's where the learning and that's where the improvement comes from.
[29:46] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
