I am in the process of gathering information for my Action Research Inquiry through teacher survey questionnaires, meeting with departmental meetings, and through interviewing other district technology leaders. Additional strategies can be used as explained in the Harris text (p 94-96). Some of these methods are the Force Field Analysis, the Delphi method, and the Nominal Group Technique.
The Force Field Analysis method can be applied through the assessing and supporting of school improvement. I will be utilizing the Force Field Analysis (Harris 2010) prior to implementation and during the Action Inquiry to create effective and relevant surveys or evaluation tools. The steps for the Force Field Analysis, as outlined in the Harris text (Harris p 96) are as follows:
· Describe the current situation
· Describe the proposed change
· Identify what will happen if no change occurs
· Identify the forces driving the proposed change
· Identify the forces resisting the change
· Determine whether the change is viable (this can be done by assigning points to the forces driving the change and points to the forces resisting change)
· If the change is viable, what is needed for implementation? Will you need to reduce the strength of the forces opposing the change, or increase the forces driving the change?
The Delphi Method allows for gaining a deeper understanding of the problem. It can involve as many as 20 participants and still provides for a good level of confidentiality. I will be utilizing the Delphi Method while conducting the survey research on our campus. I will create the teacher survey using this method. During the process, the participants respond to questionnaires in two or more rounds and sometimes the responses can be made through an email process. As the process continues the group converges on a level of consensus to the original problem. The following format is used during this process:
· Send around a problem statement to staff
· Ask staff to write down what he or she believes needs to be done
· Retrieve the written comments
· Reproduce everyone’s comments
· Return all the comments to the participants
· Participants read comments and then individually write a synthesis of the various ideas (this step is optional and often is omitted due to time constraints)
· Collect everyone’s syntheses or you do this yourself
· Make a new list of all synthesized ideas
· Send the new list back to participants and ask them to rank items
· Collect and compute an average and frequency of ratings; then return tallies to participants to re-rank
The Nominal Group Technique is a five-step process that is usually completed in small group meetings such as departmental meetings or curriculum meetings, or at a faculty meeting with a facilitator leading the discussion. I will be utilizing the Nominal Group Technique to evaluate the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of changes made to the PLCs. Use the results to come up with future Action Inquiry topics.
To follow the format of this technique you would follow these five steps as outlined in the Harris text (p 96, 97):
· Have each individual within a small group silently generate and write perceived needs/issues. Do not allow discussion among participants at this point.
· Ask each individual to share orally with the small group one perceived need/issue at a time. The Facilitator then writes these on a flip chart with NO discussion.
· Lead small group discussions of each perceived need/issue for further clarification.
· Ask group members to rewrite and rate all perceived needs/issues listed in the previous step. Numerical values can be assigned to each from 1-5 for example.
During this technique, the leader or facilitator of the group cannot be judgmental or allow judgmental comments from participants as they work through the issues for explanation.
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