Action Research for Teacher Professional Development: A Narrative Study

Abstract

This research study entitled Action Research for Teacher Professional Development: A Narrative Study was carried out to explore the experiences of secondary level English teachers while conducting action research in terms of practicality, effectiveness and challenges. Keeping the objectives into consideration, four secondary level English 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. After the collection of the data they were categorized into four themes and analyzed by using thematic analysis. I categorized all the findings into four themes: teachers’ practices of action research, teachers’ experiences of action research, effectiveness of action research and challenges of action research.I found that teacher practice AR as effective tool to solve problems, classroom based research and means of collaboration for their professional development. Most of the teacher did not get proper support from their colleagues although AR has positive impact on students’ achievement and helps for their professional development. The major effectiveness of AR are; it is practical in nature and brings innovation in teaching.Despite these strengths, little knowledge of the AR, lack of appropriate teaching materials, time consumption, irregularity of the students and large number of students in a single classroom are the major challenges faced by teachers. This thesis has been divided into five chapters vi. introduction; review of relate dliterature and conceptual framework; methods and procedures; analysis and interpretation of data; and findings, conclusion and recommendations. The first chapter consists of background of the study, statement of problem, objectives of the study, research questions, significance of the study, delimitations of the studyand operational definitions of the key terms. Similarly, the second chapter deals with the review of theoretical literature, review of empirical literature,implications of the review for the study and conceptual framework. Likewise, the third chapter sheds light on the methods and procedures of the study under which methods and design of the study, population, sample and sampling strategy,research tool, sources of data, data collection procedures and ethical considerations. The fourth chapter presents the analysis of data and interpretation of the results. Finally, the fifth chapter encompasses overall findings, conclusion and recommendations related to policy level, practice level and further research.