Action Research

I am using a couple of different techniques to collect data for action research. I use my own observations of group dynamics while we work on our project. This in combination with video of PA and blog reflections gives me a variety of ways to evaluate my research question.. Last week I gave my group a survey on the importance of roles during our PA project. The results are posted on my blog under Action research questions for the MCTC young achievers group.

I have adjusted my initial action research question slightly to better understand the importance of the chosen roles in our group.

My original question was: Will the weekly delegation of roles help our group work as a cohesive unit or does it limit the chance for a synergetic group effort?
My revised question is: How have our roles affected our public achievement project, and have these roles helped our group function as a cohesive unit?

We have continued to use the same chosen roles in our group, we have the documentarian, task master data keeper and reader. I have experimented with how roles are chosen in our group. Initially we would rotate. This worked okay but there were certain personalities in the group that gravitated towards certain roles. We then adjusted the process from delegation to discussion. This seemed like an improvement from the previous model. The role of the documentarian was most often picked by Jyree. Patrick and Michael would switch off choosing the role of data-keeper and task-master. This again worked pretty well however I noticed that now that the roles were developed we could move away from the distinction of titles. Roles seem to have strong importance in our PA process but now that they have been established and we understand which each can offer they contribute differently. I think my initial question was too focused on the distinction of each individual role and not on what they offer to group work. We have molded our roles and taken the necessary pieces of them for our group to help our group function better as a cohesive.