Publishing Your Project

When writing about your research, keep in mind that you are first writing to better understand what the research means to you. The implications derived from your research are important because they help the you better understand your students and what goes on in your classroom. To other people reading your research the findings and implications are important if they can relate to their situation in some way. For example, that may mean that the paper might be read by fellow teachers, parents or administrators who may want to know more about what was found because they work in similar situations or have children with the same types of needs that were addressed in your study. In some cases, a wider audience may read the paper such as readers of educational journals or magazines. Therefore, you need to think of your audience and the publishing criteria when writing the report.

Research reports can take many different formats. However, Jean Frey (1995) and Diane D. Painter (1998) from the Fairfax County Teacher Research Network suggest the following components:

• Title
• Rationale for doing the research
• Include your review of the literature
• Question(s)
• Importance of the project to you and why
• Methodology:
  • Who- populations/subjects
  • What- materials/procedures
  • How- data collection
    • Writing samples
    • Anecdotal record
    • Observations
    • Audio/visual tapes
    • Checklists
    • Tests
• Data Analysis/Findings
• Conclusion and Implications for the future
• References

Publishing criteria for educational magazines and journals can usually be found inside the front or back covers of publications. Most teacher researchers who work in research teams first publish their reports in a team collection. This collection of teacher research articles can be run off and bound or placed in a notebook and distributed to fellow staff members at school or placed in the school library. The school district's area superintendent and to the school system's staff development office may also want copies for assessment reasons or other evaluative purposes.

There are also Intranet and Internet publishing opportunities. Reports can be summarized as short articles and placed on a school's Intranet web site in a section devoted to teacher research. Technology and Learning accepts articles from teachers about what is working in the classroom related to the use of technology. A number of technology-related research articles have been published online on the TechLearning web site. Go to www.techlearning.com/content/speak/articles/write.html to learn more about submitting summaries of research projects.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, www.iste.org) accepts articles about teacher research projects for two of its publications: Learning and Leading with Technology (L&L) and the Journal of Research on Computing in Education (JRCE). For further information about submission guidelines for L&L, visit www.iste.org.

The Virginia Society for Technology in Education (VSTE), an affiliate of ISTE, welcomes teacher research articles pertaining to the use of technology in education for their VSTE Journal. Access the VSTE webpage at www.vste.org for further information about submitting articles contact the editors at editors@vste.org.

Fairfax County Public Schools has its own Internet web page with a link to a Teacher Research Network web. Although full copies of research papers are not provided on the Fairfax County web page, a listing of the authors and the titles of their papers are noted.This network also sponsors the FCPS Teacher Research Conference each year. Teacher researchers either participate in round table discussions, serve on panels, or give mini-workshops at this conference.

AR Expeditions is an on-line professional journal promoting a creative and critical dialogue between members of the action research community including; educators in formal and informal settings, community members, university faculty, industrialists, politicians and administrators. The site includes articles describing action research projects as well as strategies for conducting action research. The journal hosts an on-line continuous dialogue about issues in action research and discussions of articles with the authors and editors of the journal.

See also:

The KEEP Toolkit website CFKeep.org was launched in 2004, and since then, over 20,000 educators and students from all over the world have created over 100,000 online representations and collections that documented their efforts in educational transformation, course and curricular improvement, and experience in effective teaching and learning.

Building upon this remarkable collective work, the Teaching and Learning Commons website Teaching and Learning Commons was developed to further promote and support knowledge building and sharing in education.

MacLean, Marion S. & Mohr, Marian M. (1999). Teacher- researchers at work. Berkely, CA: National Writing Project, p. 83-89 and 165-257.

Samples of Project Papers