Changes and Revisions

After reading my classmates' comments (here as well as on the Epic courseware discussion board) and conferring with my site supervisor, I have decided to focus my research on students with special needs. I have also revised the Plan of Action to use surveys instead of (and replacing) long-form responses in journal entries, as well as including literature review to complement and supplement my research findings.

Thank you very much for your valuable input! I sincerely appreciate it. =D

My Action Research Plan

GOAL: During the entire course of the first semester, the effectiveness of inclusion and collaborative teaching will be examined and compared with self-contained/resource to determine student placement and address specific student needs.

Data Collection Procedures/Instruments

Parental and administrative consent will be secured before study of the inclusion class is to begin. The students’ data will be collected by assigning the students numbers; their names will not be used so as to maintain confidentiality when writing or sharing this research data. Additionally, the teachers will be referred to as special education or general education teachers. Their identities will also remain private.

The study will be conducted over the course of one semester or two nine-week periods. The students and teachers will be expected to make journal entries that reflect their personal perceptions of the inclusion class. Also, the journal entries will periodically require the participants to answer open ended questions designed to narrow the focus of the responses.

In the first nine weeks the students will be given assessments to determine their academic levels in reading and mathematics. Also during this time, the instructors will use traditional teaching methods to determine their effectiveness, and end with weekly assessments to measure student achievement in the form of a state benchmark test. During the second nine weeks the teachers will use the data collected in the first six weeks to group the students according to ability levels and collaboratively design instructional plans that require the presentation of information to be stratified and more inclusively structured for their students while continuing to apply weekly assessments.

By the end of the first semester, the inclusion teachers will have implemented accommodations and modifications to their classroom instruction that would allow for each of the students to have had an opportunity for academic growth. The general education teacher will continue with traditional teaching methods. These efforts will be measured by ending the nine weeks with a district-wide benchmark test. Also at the end of the second nine weeks, the students and teachers will be given a survey designed to measure their degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with instructional and social aspects of the inclusion class.