Intensifying the Conduct of Action Research
Ariel C. Venida
Conducting action research is now becoming the trend in the Department of Education. I believe that intensifying the conduct of action research and putting researches into practice can be a great way of improving classroom practices to improve learning outcomes and promote the professional and personal growth of the teacher.
However, although the conduct of research among teachers is highly encouraged, still, the lack of financial support from the school, lack of skills and knowledge in conducting research, and heavy teaching loads are some of the barriers that hinder them in doing research.
Furthermore, it is common for some teachers to use job promotion and masters’degree completion as motivations in doing research. Nothing is wrong with having the motivation to do something.
However, the problem associated with this is that sometimes the original purpose of conducting action research which is to enhance classroom practices and to improve learning outcomes is being defeated. Sometimes, putting the findings of these researches into practice is no longer the priority of the researcher after being promoted or after completing a degree and the research papers are just be piled inside a cabinet.
Another thing is that sometimes, the integrity of the research findings suffers due to this kind of mentality.
Reflecting on these concerns, I strongly believe that there is a need for a well-defined policy to be crafted by the DepEd to address these issues.
One example of intervention is lessening the teaching load of those teachers who are researching so that they will have more time to devote to doing their research.
If this will be the case, I think there will be more teachers who will be encouraged to conduct researches.
A change of mindset is also necessary.
Conduct research because you want to contribute to the improvement of the teaching-learning process and not merely because you just want to have additional points for your promotion.
I think there should also be a policy that will monitor and evaluate if research findings are being utilized and there should be a mechanism that will support and encourage teachers to disseminate research the research findings.
--oOo-The author is Teacher II at Bical High School