Action research for teacher professional development

Abstract

This research study entitled Action research for Teacher Professional Development was carried out to explore the belief of English language teachers of community schools on action research for teacher professional development. I adopted the narrative inquiry as a research design. To conduct this research, three secondary level English teachers were selected as the sample by using purposive non-random sampling strategy. Data for this study were collected by conducting semi-structured interview with the selected participants. The collected data were analysed thematically. I found the role of action research as an effective tool to solve the teaching and learning problems in the classroom which is also called as a classroom-based research. It is also one of the best strategies for the teachers' professional development. Most of the teachers did not get proper support from their colleagues, principal and also from the administration section although action research has positive impacts on student’s achievement and helps for their professional development. The major effectiveness of action research is that it is practical in nature which brings innovation in teaching. Despite these strengths, lack of appropriate teaching materials, time consumption, large number of students in a single classroom, little knowledge of action research and the irregularity of the students are the major problems faced by the teachers at the period of conducting and implementing the action research.

The present study consists of five chapters. Chapter one consists of an introductory part. It includes the background of the study, statement of the problem, objective of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitation of the study and operational definition of the key terms. Similarly, chapter two deals with the review of the related theoretical literature, review of empirical literature, implication of the review for the study and the conceptual framework. Chapter three includes design of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy, data collection tools and techniques, data collection procedures, data analysis and interpretation procedure and ethical consideration. Likewise, chapter four presents the analysis of the data and the interpretation of the results. Finally, chapter five presents the encompasses the overall findings, conclusion and the recommendations related to policy level, practice level and further research.