1. Chapter 3: Planning for Action Research
Limiting a Topic
Digging into the Literature

2. Identifying a Topic for Research:
Preliminary Considerations:
Personal Interest
Importance
Time
Difficulty
Monetary Costs
Research Ethics

3. Identifying a Topic for Research:
Limiting a Topic: Focus on: Who? What? When? Where? How?

4. Planning for Action Research:
Gathering Preliminary Information Reconnaissance Self-Reflection Description Explanation

5. Planning for Action Research:
Reviewing Related Literature:
Examination of journal articles, books, and other sources related to an action research project
Primary Sources:
Journal Articles
Monographs
Papers Presented at
Conferences
Secondary Sources:
Meta-analyses and Literature Reviews

6. Planning for Action Research:
The purpose of the Literature Review is to guide and inform research planning.

7. Narrowing the Topic: Broad Topic Research Question? Narrowed Version
What teachers’ lives are like outside of school.
Leisure activities of elementary teachers and the amount of time they spend on them.
Factors that affect learning among culturally diverse students
Hispanic students’ perceptions of factors that make academic success more difficult.
Importance of reading practice in developing reading skills
Effect of first grade reading practice when fifth grade ‘buddies’ are used regularly.
Virtual dissection versus real dissection
Tenth-grade biology student’s perceptions of virtual and real dissections

8. Reviewing Related Literature: Sources
Primary Sources: Searching Specialized Indices or databases. ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center): est by US Dept. of Education. Largest database for locating research in education.

9. SEARCHING DATA BASES:
Boolean Operators: keywords that enable retrieval of terms and specific combinations ('and', 'or', 'if') Continue to 'Narrow' Abstract: brief summary of document contents.

10. Literature Review:
Plan to 'summarize' your findings Document Sources What are the findings of previous research? Cohesive essay Concluding paragraph

11. References:
1) Mertler, C. A. (2014). Action research: Improving schools and empowering educators (4th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publishers.