NUIM PGDE Action Research Project

Lord TSC

I hope it's ok posting this here. My reasoning is that I'm more likely to get a better answer from other teachers who have been through this project and have completed it. I also think there's more NUIM PGDE students here than on any other board, and as such, this is the best place to get advice from.

I'm a bit concerned about my action research project. When we were told it should be based on an aspect of our teaching we felt was weak and could do with improvement, my mind immediatly settled on classroom discipline, since this is by far my weakest point. However, when the exact details were sent round, I read that...

"The topic chosen for study (i.e. the performance gap) must primarily be focused on a pedagogical and not a classroom management issue. "

That kind of eliminates discipline in the classroom then, since it falls into the later category. So now I'm worried about what to do it on. I've heard a lot of people say they want to do it on "questioning" but to be honest, I've always tried to avoid following the crowd. I figure I can get better marks doing something slightly more original. Not that I'm looking for a completly unique spin, mind you.

But I'm worried about what falls under pedagogical. I was thinking of doing it on homework, both the giving of and correcting of, which would encompass lower and higher order homework assignments, my grading skills and so forth.

Would this fall under that banner? I just don't want to write 4,000 words, only to be told I messed up with my topic. Also, and I don't want this to come accross as being lazy and seeking easy way outs as much as it is a general quest for advice, anyone have advice on the best way to tackle this massive project?

mardim

I did mine last year and allot of people did it on questioning, i did mine on improving innovation in my lessons. So i wrote about different resources i was using and different things I’d tried and wrote about what worked and what didn’t, I went on about catering for the different ways people learn and included some of the theorists.

homework would fall under the banner as it is falls under assessment of, for and as learning so theres loads you can write. (if in doubt you can always send an email to who gave you the question).



Firstly we had to give the setting where we carried out the project (the type of school, mixed, ss, disadvantaged, what class groups we used)
We needed to say why we had chosen the topic we choose and show evidence of this, we also needed to show evidence that we had made the change, what change we saw in the classroom and whether or not this had improved our teaching (so maybe your video, voice recording, someone else’s observations of the class, what your supervisor said, student questionnaires). hope this helps a bit!

Lord TSC

That does actually, and I'm feeling a bit more confident now