What I learned about Action Research? Ways that I can use it in educational setting?

Going into the class I felt like I knew a little bit about a action research plan, but after reading this week's material I realized that it was so much more than I thought in the beginning. I learned that it's not just a way to fix problems that you might be facing in your school, but a way to advance your knowledge through continuous learning.
It gives a principal a chance to reflect on things that might need to change in the school, to start to grow a strong professional learning community in their school, and model instructional leadership to the staff. “Inquiry is at the core of everything that I do, whether it is working with students, teachers, colleagues, or whole school” (Stoicovy p.9). Also I noticed after reading that my school does a lot of action research throughout the school with different things we do such as we have PLC every week, do a book study at the beginning of the year as part of our PLC, site base committee that meets monthly, and principals meet once a week to go over things going on in the school. Engagement in principal inquiry enables me to see things I wouldn't ordinarily see in my school when I don't make time to step back, pose questions, really look at all kinds of data, read, talk with other administrators as well as my teachers and the students in my building, and commit to continuous school improvement (Wnek, p.9). I also learned that a action research plan when you involve everyone it will make everyone feel like that have ownership of the students education. Even though principal are so consumed with everything that goes on in the school from students, to parents, to administration, to teachers, and so many other things they still need to take out time to use action research to work through some of the issues that they are facing. I realized that the action research plan is a very time consuming thing, but in the end it will benefit everyone that is involved.

I have been thinking about so many ways that we as educators can use action research in our every day job in the school. It can be very beneficial to use it to see what we can do at our school to get more parent involvement which has been an issue especially on the athletic side since I have been there 6 years ago. Also would like to use it to see what the effects of going to a IB program has had on other Title 1 schools across the country. The past two years our boy's athletes grades have dropped so much so after I find this information I will use it to come up with ways to get our boys grades up so they can participate in sports. We need to look to see if changing to an IB campus and raising the rigor in all classes has any effect on behavior in the class room. During PLC I feel like we need to use action research more in some of our meetings to come up with ideas to better some of our areas that might need to improve. Lastly we can use the action research plan to look at ways that we can continue to educate our whole staff through different classes.