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1. THE ACTION RESEARCH JOURNAL
"Journal writing is a powerful design for learning for a number of
reasons. Journaling is a means for recording personal thoughts,
daily experiences, observations, and evolving insights" (Hiemstra,
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Explore Thoughts - At times, you may simply wish to mull over what
you are doing or how you are feeling as you engage in your
research project. You may be in a quandary, upset, or you might be ecstatic because the
intervention you have chosen is going much better than you
ever thought possible! Your journal can be a safe outlet
for your feelings; you are not obligated to share what
you’ve written with anyone – unless you want to.
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- Reflect - Use your journal as a “Response Journal” to
react to and reflect upon ideas from articles. Or go beyond
observation by becoming a self-reflective practitioner --
reacting to what you’ve done with your students or what you
have seen them doing. You will, no doubt, gain insights
from your experiences and your readings; your journal is the
best place to record these.
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- Expand Ideas - Use your journal as a learning log – as
a means of brainstorming to expand your impressions /
thoughts about what is taking place during your study. When
you are engaged in thinking about your action research
project, it helps to write down your thoughts instead of
just keeping them in your head. Use the writing process to
assist your thinking. Keeping a journal in this way will
enable you to keep a record of where your modifications or
midcourse changes in direction originally came from, and
your journal serves as a “reseptacle” for
easy retrieval later on, when it comes time for you to write
your summary.
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- Record Progress - You can use your journal to record the synthesized results
of surveys, interviews, observations, and both formal and
informal assessments. By keeping these results in your
journal, your data is readily available and easy to find.
You can even paste pictures of your students/clients in action, and
then describe what is depicted in each picture – like a
scrapbook.
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