Limitations
Conducting this Action Research has been transformational for me as an educator and as a learner. However, I acknowledge that there were some limitations to my inquiry.
The process of Action Research contains inherent limitations.
As with all Action Research, there existed inherent limitations to the process and progression of my project. One of these limitations was that I was acting as teacher and researcher for this project. As a result, the rigor and carefulness I utilized while gathering and analyzing data were limited by time and much more restricted than if I had been acting as the researcher alone. Furthermore, because I was familiar with these students and felt personally invested in their learning, I had a biased viewpoint of what I wanted to accomplish and employed methods I believed would be beneficial to my students. Finally, my Action Research yielded results only relevant to the context in which I conducted my research. Thus, no generalizations can be made regarding my findings because the scope of my study was limited to my 24 students in my specific classroom.
Other limitations of my Action Research relate to the topic of my research question and the time of year in which my study took place.
Many factors affected students’ attitudes towards writing and their achievement in writing.
While my research intended to focus on the affects an authentic audience has on student attitudes towards writing and their academic achievement in writing, the implementation of my research intervention introduced my students to a variety of changes in their writing instruction. Not only did I provide them with an authentic audience for their writing projects, but I also implemented other changes that included:
• Consistent, daily writing opportunities
• Regular mini lessons based on students’ work, conferences, questions and challenges.
• Regular opportunities for students to talk to me and their peers about their writing
• Providing specific feedback
• Giving students choice regarding what they will write about
All of these factors played a role in students’ attitudes towards and achievement in writing. Consequently, I was unable to isolate the specific affect an authentic audience had on their attitudes and achievement. Instead, I needed to look at their progression as writers and their feelings towards writing from a more holistic standpoint.
End-of-the-year activities disrupted the implementation of Phase Three and nostalgic emotions may have influenced student feedback.
Phase Three was conducted during the final weeks of school. Because of this, activities, field trips, assessments and assemblies disrupted the schedule of the writing workshop and the amount of time students were given to complete their final project. Furthermore, I have to wonder if students’ nostalgic feelings that naturally occur at the end of the school year influenced the feedback they provided in their final exit slips and surveys. Students were extremely sad to see their second grade year come to an end, and by the last week of school, students were reminiscing with each other, romanticizing the year that past and highlighting all of the positive memories they had as a class. The students were aware of the fact that they would not see me the following school year so they began showering me with letters of appreciation, notes of love and pictures to remember them by. Perhaps these feelings of nostalgia affected the way they answered their final feedback questions and surveys and made the positive aspects of their writing experience more pronounced.
The process of Action Research contains inherent limitations.
As with all Action Research, there existed inherent limitations to the process and progression of my project. One of these limitations was that I was acting as teacher and researcher for this project. As a result, the rigor and carefulness I utilized while gathering and analyzing data were limited by time and much more restricted than if I had been acting as the researcher alone. Furthermore, because I was familiar with these students and felt personally invested in their learning, I had a biased viewpoint of what I wanted to accomplish and employed methods I believed would be beneficial to my students. Finally, my Action Research yielded results only relevant to the context in which I conducted my research. Thus, no generalizations can be made regarding my findings because the scope of my study was limited to my 24 students in my specific classroom.
Other limitations of my Action Research relate to the topic of my research question and the time of year in which my study took place.
Many factors affected students’ attitudes towards writing and their achievement in writing.
While my research intended to focus on the affects an authentic audience has on student attitudes towards writing and their academic achievement in writing, the implementation of my research intervention introduced my students to a variety of changes in their writing instruction. Not only did I provide them with an authentic audience for their writing projects, but I also implemented other changes that included:
• Consistent, daily writing opportunities
• Regular mini lessons based on students’ work, conferences, questions and challenges.
• Regular opportunities for students to talk to me and their peers about their writing
• Providing specific feedback
• Giving students choice regarding what they will write about
All of these factors played a role in students’ attitudes towards and achievement in writing. Consequently, I was unable to isolate the specific affect an authentic audience had on their attitudes and achievement. Instead, I needed to look at their progression as writers and their feelings towards writing from a more holistic standpoint.
End-of-the-year activities disrupted the implementation of Phase Three and nostalgic emotions may have influenced student feedback.
Phase Three was conducted during the final weeks of school. Because of this, activities, field trips, assessments and assemblies disrupted the schedule of the writing workshop and the amount of time students were given to complete their final project. Furthermore, I have to wonder if students’ nostalgic feelings that naturally occur at the end of the school year influenced the feedback they provided in their final exit slips and surveys. Students were extremely sad to see their second grade year come to an end, and by the last week of school, students were reminiscing with each other, romanticizing the year that past and highlighting all of the positive memories they had as a class. The students were aware of the fact that they would not see me the following school year so they began showering me with letters of appreciation, notes of love and pictures to remember them by. Perhaps these feelings of nostalgia affected the way they answered their final feedback questions and surveys and made the positive aspects of their writing experience more pronounced.