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Inquiry Based Research

  My next set of classes has started.  We are reading The Reflective Educator’s Guide to Classroom Research in one class, and Chapter 1 mentions starting an inquiry journal.  The book is about doing inquiry-based research or active research in your classroom.  It discusses the importance of intentionally writing down the observations of the class (Dana and Yendol-Hoppey, 2020).  This makes sense, given that you have a lab, research, engineering notebook that needs to be done if you are doing scientific research.  These are taken seriously as the documentation.  I think teachers should be doing this as well. 

I thought this would be a great place to my inquiry journal and record my thoughts.  My hope of learning about inquiry-based research is to do more research in my classroom.  I want to use data in my classroom to drive my teaching methodologies and maybe publish (One of these days, I will write about how much I fear writing).  Even if I don’t publish, I would like to use my research to help others through workshops and PD.  I am hesitant about the time it will take.  I am nervous that I won’t follow through once I am out of the course.  I hope to find ways to incorporate it and continue to grow as an educator.  I need to continue finding educators who also want to listen and explore teaching with me to do this.  Thanks to social media, this is easy to do.  I also hope to keep all three classes separate in my mind.  One is on technology assessments, creating a STEM culture, and this class.  Fingers crossed, seven weeks left. 

Reference:

Dana, N. F., & Yendol-Hoppey, D. (2020). The reflective educator’s guide to classroom research: Learning to teach and teaching to learn through practitioner inquiry (4th ed.). Corwin.

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