 So hello everyone and many thanks for joining us in this webinar focusing on action research. In this webinar we will learn how to examine our educational practice systematically and carefully using the techniques of research and we will discuss about how we can turn a need-winning project into a classroom-based investigation that could help inform our future teaching practices. To discuss all these we are glad to have with us Myrin Glent who is an independent advisor on postgraduate teacher education programs in the network for educational action research in Ireland. Myrin is a formerly primary school teacher and school principal, action research practitioner and co-author of four books. Myrin, many thanks for joining us today. The floor is yours. Great. Okay, hi everybody. I'm just uploading my slides here. So my name is Myrin Glent as if you just had said and I'm delighted to meet you all and I'm also equally delighted to be at this session today. It's very exciting to meet people from all over Europe, all over the world sometimes who are interested in doing action research and who are interested in e-twinning which are both really good projects. So I'm going to give you the opportunity at the end of this session to ask questions and feel free to input any queries you might have in the chat section right throughout the session because I'm sure I'm going to say things that you will probably say to yourselves oh my goodness what is this woman talking about. So please put your questions in the chat and we will address them at the end or if there's something really urgent, Effie is going to alert me in the middle and just you might have a chat about stuff. I'm also going to use Menti in this session so you might find it easier to use your phone for that if you're not using it already, okay? And if you happen to fall out of the session just follow the link that brought you here already, okay. So I'm going to talk about educational action research. So it's a values-based form of research that can be undertaken in your practice with the aim of enhancing it, improving it and at the same time working towards a better, more just and more equitable world as we try to make a difference. So as teachers and researchers we hope to act educationally in the sense of acting for the good of each person and for the good of humankind. That's what Stephen Chemeth says. So while undertaking educational action research, the researcher generates their own educational theory from their practice, okay, so the key features. So the research is about yourself and your work along with others, okay? So the research is on you, okay, so you'll be asking how can I improve my practice but it's not just you on your own in isolation, it's you and your class or perhaps you and your colleagues at school or perhaps the parents or the wider community. And this is one of the big differences between traditional forms of action of research and action research. We as action researchers place ourselves right at the heart of the research with the aim of enhancing our practice. So it's also values based and a values led form of research. So our values lie at the heart of the whole process. So we base, as educators we know this, we base our practice on the values we hold. They're the foundations of our work and they're also the overarching principles towards which we aspire. Some people like to use the term axiology to describe the way we bring our values right into the research process. Now in many forms of traditional research, values are expected to be kept right outside of the research in a detached and personal kind of way. But for those of us involved in action research and self-study, they are included and they lie right at the heart of the research. So examples of values might be social justice, care, equality, inclusion. These are often the values that people say they hold when they're involved in action research. So reflection is built into the action research process, you know, where as an action researcher you actively take time out to reflect on your day's work, to reflect on the positive experiences as well as the issues of concern that arise for you. Action researchers record their reflection in a research journal. So you always see action researchers going around with notebooks and they're always writing down ideas right throughout the day and then they reflect, you know, in a calmer time in the evening. We also reflect critically. And by critically I mean we question, we question the taken for granted assumptions we make about our practice. We draw up a research question and of course our question has to do with aiming towards enhancing or perhaps exploring a particular aspect of practice, of our practice. And when I say our practice, I mean it's teachers of our teaching and our questions generally are kind of of the form, how do I learn more about my teaching of maths, for example. So action research, the name gives it away really. It involves taking action as well too and maybe modifying the action if necessary. And also new learning emerges in the process of the learning. So by the action, you know, when we take an action maybe it's introducing a new activity in our classroom or perhaps it's exploring a practice we already are doing and it's about generating new learning. And like all forms of research it assumes rigor and data collection, seeking ethical permissions, reading about our area of interest, analysing data, stating new learning, generating theory and sharing our new learning with others. It is a cyclical process in that usually we do one cycle of action research and then from the learning that has emerged in that cycle we move on and do another cycle. And sometimes I may as well warn you it becomes a lifelong habit so be ready for it. Action research is for everybody, it is for everybody. You know we tend to think about research only being for academics but it is for everybody and it takes place in your workplace and you look at the truth and tell the truth of your given situation regardless of how imperfect or flawed it might be. So research is always, as I've said, along with others, pupils, colleagues, critical friends, parents, the wider community, even maybe perhaps E-twinning partners. Okay so I, I've said already that I lies at the heart of the research, I, I mean me. So in educational action research you put yourself as the researcher and as the educator or the practitioner at the centre of the research. So once you begin to do action research in your practice you're both a practitioner and a researcher and it's quite a complex and complicated role really but it's good fun. So you ask questions as I've just said with an eye focus and you become empowered to enhance your practice and that's something that's not really been, I suppose, researched or documented well but it's true and when you talk to other action researchers they feel a sense of taking control and being empowered and being able to change things for the better which is good I think in our person, in our current climate of being told and being prescribed what to do. I think it's a good thing for us as teachers and educators to feel about our work. The eye in educational research as I've already said is not egotistical it is you know it is a kind of a broad outward looking eye and Jack Whitehead has a nice clip there on YouTube and you can check it out yourselves later where he talks about that whole idea. I'm not going to show it to you now but you can catch it yourselves later on. Okay so why would we do action research? What I suppose the main thing is it's transformative you know it's about change you know you take steps to enhance your practice or about learning more about it. It's based on real life and the real everyday occurrences that happen in your classrooms and your places of work and the unpredictability of school life and so even in COVID times it was a good piece of research to do because it embraced all the upset and all the discomfort that people experienced while during COVID. Even at a basic level taking steps to improve practice is beneficial. You know you share your research in terms of your educational influence not only on yourself and your learning but on the learning of others and potentially on policy perhaps. We also explore our own identity and we delve into that a little in a little while but we get to know ourselves a little bit more as people and as professionals and we as we you know come to terms and explore I suppose our understandings of our values and how they inspire how we work at least how they're meant to inspire how we work and again I have that whole idea of the sense of ownership and agency and how action researchers really do tend to be collegiate and supportive of one another. Action researchers always you know if an action researcher looks for help from something then somebody will always come to their aid and offer some form of help if needed and it just seems to go with the territory. I'm not sure again it's not a researched fact but it does seem to be the case. Okay so looking at a research project there are kind of three main stages and I suppose that they're pretty clear you know and they align with many other forms of research. There's the preparation stage which I think in action research is really really important you know and I nearly say to people you know try and do the preparation stage before you begin the action research which I guess maybe a bit of a complication but the preparation stage is really important to put the you know all the work in before you actually do the project. Then the project stage is the second stage and the theory stage generating our theory from our practice is the final stage and I just run through these three stages briefly. Okay so the preparation stage is I suppose it begins off with that whole idea of stopping and reflecting. So the initial stage of action research and of self-study and of you know all good forms of research really is that a whole idea of just stopping taking a breath and taking time to just have a think about the work we do as teachers. Okay to question what it is that we do and why we do what we do to talk to critical friends. Now I've said the word critical friends already and I'm just going to explain what critical friend is here. A critical friend is kind of a key person in your action research process. The critical friend is somebody you turn to right throughout the research process and you share the ideas that are coming to you with them. Usually people can have two or three critical friends and your friend is there to support you and to encourage you and to try and keep you on track but above all else that they would question any ideas you have that they may not necessarily think are clear or fair or proper. So critical friends kind of they have a tough love situation going on with you and that they want to be there for you to support you but that they will question anything that needs to be questioned. Okay so that's your critical friend so it's always good to have at least one if not a few maybe somebody who's familiar with your work you know maybe it might be a co-teacher or it might be somebody a teacher in another school or it doesn't need necessarily be a teacher but somebody who understands what you're working at. Okay preparation so we need to you know work on our thinking and our reading and if we haven't begun to read professionally about our work maybe now is a good time to start to do it. Think about our identity and ourselves and our values and our sense of being a professional. So we ask ourselves questions like what are my concerns and why am I concerned as outlined by Gene Mcniff and Jack Whitehead and I would discuss those ideas in a few minutes in greater detail. Okay it's good to establish a research question as is the case with all forms of research. With us action researchers we try to imagine possibilities and what we would like for our practice and then we decide on a plan of action and the action needn't necessarily be an intervention the action can be developing a new insight ourselves into our work it's up to ourselves to mold the project into our own need and our own set of values. So we make a timeline for the project and we think about how we might collect data to show that we are learning and that there is something happening in our research and it's important of course to get all necessary ethical permissions and approval before we start doing anything like that. The project stage then is the second stage and this is where we begin to implement the new strategy the new form of thinking the new attitude whatever it is that we're trying that we're going to change. So we gather data and reflect on the work that we're doing and we evaluate the actions we're taking and we review how we see our values lived in our practice. So we can see immediately that there is that direct connection between enhancing practice and the values we hold and how they're interconnected and they're part perhaps of a bigger world view. We're looking for indications that we are improving our we are improving our practice that we're actually doing what we're saying we're doing and we don't always find that you know but we try obviously to do that and we establish great criteria by which you can evaluate the work the quality of the work and we discuss the research with critical friends as I've just said on an ongoing basis and we're always looking for evidence to show enhanced practice. That's the main focus of this of the project stage. Then we move on to generating theory from practice. We make an overall claim and we say I have learned basically this is what I have learned in the duration of my project. Now if you get as I said a moment ago if you cannot see an improvement in practice and sometimes that is the case despite people's best efforts things really haven't improved and they have no data to show an improvement but I do you know sometimes people become disheartened when this happens but there is no need to be disheartened because no matter what happens you would have learned and increased your professional learning in the process and that in itself is a valuable valuable piece of learning to be shared with others. Obviously we would like to see an improvement in practice and it's the nature of ourselves teachers to want to see that improvement but just sometimes it doesn't work out as sweetly as we would like. It's important for us to be rigorous and to show our integrity as practitioners and researchers and to give an honest account of what happens. So that whole idea of generating theory sounds maybe a little bit frightening for people but really basically what it means according to McNiff and Whitehead and other writers in the field it means just giving descriptions and explanations of what you have done and that is really what it's that's what we mean by generating theory is making a claim and offering descriptions and explanations so it's not a very highbrow thing it just sounds more highbrow than it actually is. Okay it's always good I think when we're engaged in action research and even if it's only a tiny little project I think it's good to have a report or a presentation of some kind so that you can share the story of your learning and very often maybe we'll only share the story of our learning with our colleagues or our class groupings you know or maybe we could go further afield but it's important to show this potential significance of your work and then maybe if you like move on to a new cycle again I know Donald Sean talked about how new questions are really important as well but you may of course just be exhausted after one cycle and feel you've done enough. Okay so we're going to look at a model of how we might do action research now again this is the McNiff and Whitehead model and they have modified this themselves over the years because as you can see it's quite old and I'm sure they probably will continue to do so and so it begins off with you asking yourself what is my concern or my area of interest what is why am I concerned how do I show the situation as it is and as it develops and so that's about collecting data what can I do about it what is my plan what will I do what intervention will I undertake or what exercise will I do what will my action be how can I test the validity of my claims to knowledge so how how can I be sure that what I'm saying is correct and you know our critical friends are very valuable at this stage you know when you one ID is by them and they can say yes this is what you have done this is what you've learned and how do I modify my ideas and practices in the light of the evaluation so it's those see those first two questions are the ones we're going to be looking at really what is my concern and why am I interested or concerned okay so mcniffin might have chose to use the words what is my concern but I know my colleagues in neary and I have declared that that idea of what is my concern can be reinterpreted or rephrased as you know what am I interested in or what am I passionate about or what am I curious about what puzzles me of me about my work what aspect of my practice would I like to explore more fully or even what irritates me about my practice you know those of you who are involved in e-twinning are obviously I would say curious about other cultures and making collaborative projects with other people in other countries and making ideas our understandings of other cultures accessible and interesting both for your students and yourself so right now we're just going to take a little moment and I'm going to just move on to our next slide so I would like you to go to menti.com that's possible and to use the code 28056251 and what we're going to do is I'm just going to just negotiate back I'm just navigate back okay so these are the questions what am I interested in and see how many of those answers you can answer as many times as you want until you just see if it can bring yourself to what is important for yourself if you were to undertake an action research project okay now I'm going to give you the link here I know Effie has put it in the chat I'll leave this here for a moment and we all get established there okay so it's 28056251 and these are the questions I'd like you to ask and so really in tradition okay under recently we'd just be asking what is my concern what is bothering me whereas we can look at more positive things as well so try and fill in there as many answers I'll give you two or three minutes for that okay okay so I hope you've had the opportunity to put in a few answers at least even one answer to those questions there what am I interested in what am I passionate about as reinterpretations of what is my concern okay so I think if you click on the results link here yourselves it should bring you to our results sheet and we see how things are going so we've got answers here people are interested in exchange cultural differences different cultures curious just in general the climate crisis technology coding robotics technology and emerging technologies I'm interested in motivating students practices and teaching curious about that the young are not as curious about all that they find it that young people are not as curious as people might come might consider okay that's interesting and so these are things that might become a focus for the for a research an action research project okay so I hope you're able to see those results there okay okay so action research and your e-twinning project okay so how can we link them well actually we can link them very easily because nearly by nature there are elements that just cross over one another and make them I suppose accessible so if we think about our possibilities around our e-twinning and I think maybe just from the answers we've looked at we can see that there are links already and just have a little think about how you might do some research on your work with e-twinning okay so you're already doing or at least thinking about doing something innovative you know I know some of you are right in the middle of an e-twinning project whereas others of you are just maybe beginning or dipping your toes in the e-twinning process but already we know that action research is for any aspect of your of your practice so right now you can begin to think about doing an action research project on your e-twinning process do you find that you're already maybe beginning to become a better teacher as a result of your you know your e-twinning project you might even becoming more insightful so if you explore your interest in your e-twinning project and ask yourselves questions like why am I so interested in this particular process an e-twinning itself e-twinning is a pretty innovative idea not every teacher is involved in it so ask yourself why why am I interested in e-twinning or you could ask yourself why am I interested in the project this specific project you're doing with your e-twinning partner or partners what is it that has drawn you to that you can investigate how your project is going you can investigate what brought you to the project you can ask yourself what you are learning from the process what are your students learning you know it's an innovative project that involves collaboration so what is your experience of collaboration are all your students in your class connecting through this e-twinning process are you yourself as a practitioner making connections perhaps with your own parents are you making connections with the wider community and are you making connections with the community of your partner school these are all really intriguing questions and they are very very valid to do research on both as action researchers and people involved in the e-twinning process okay so we've been looking at doing action research in our own practice but there's also a possibility and again you don't have to do it you can do the you can do the action research in your own practice as an e-twinning school but you could also like you could also choose to research collaboratively with your e-twinning partner if you liked but you would need to think about how you would align your project aims with those of your e-twinning partner and how you would align your values with those of your partner's skills that one might be a little bit difficult also you need to ask yourself how would you respond to people with different values and aims and how might you include the parents and the wider community in this type of a project but I know it has been done and I suppose it will continue to be done so I'm going to look now for a few minutes at the project so an action research project on your e-twinning collaboration so I'm going to look at maybe the steps that you could or the tasks you could consider undertaking as you do this so again we're as we said earlier the first step is just stopping pausing and reflecting about your work as a teacher and thinking about how you might do some research on your e-twinning project and your e-twinning process in general so there are two things happening in your e-twinning there's many things happening in your e-twinning there's the whole idea of wanting to reach out to a school in a different culture but there's also then the project that you do together you know when you can combine the two or maybe pick one over the other it depends you can pick your own thing that's of the most interest and of the most perhaps even concern for you it'll be important I think to tell your e-twinning partner about your research project and you know to let them know that you are going to be researching the practice that you're doing in that in that process of doing the project the e-twinning project okay another stage or at least a beginning step off point would be to develop a heightened sense of awareness around your work in the field of e-twinning okay and just to be to develop kind of a higher sense of listening and of thinking and of watching and just awareness and that helps us as we undertake our project so does your e-twinning work inspire your schoolwork or that of your students or indeed that of the wider community it's a good idea also to develop to do some professional reading and I know I've said it earlier but it is important even in the area of e-twinning itself our collaborative projects and of course yet again I'm saying yet again do you know develop your critical friends okay we spoke about values and we kind of left them for a moment but they are crucial to the whole action research process and so they are they are what they are the underpinning foundations they're what kind of guidance not only in our research but in our actual teaching and they're also the overarching principles towards which we aspire and they also help us to develop the criteria by which we evaluate our research when we go into the more formal technicalities of doing a research project they feed into the formal validation processes but for now and I know some people are really go to thinking immediately what their what their values might be and for others it takes a while in fact sometimes it takes a whole research process for people even to come to terms around understandings what are the values that inspire us as teachers what are the values that inspire you as e-twinning teachers perhaps so let's take a moment to write into the chat box the values you think you might hold we have some in in the picture there but they need to be the ones that you use inclusion yes it's funny some people immediately know what their values are and then others they find it difficult to kind of think on what is it but you know what it's an important part of our own professionalism to have an awareness of what of what our values are connection is a lovely one because it you know it obviously speaks to e-twinning identity really good and that's part of our action research process respect fabulous tolerance brilliant democracy and our understandings of democracy from nation to nation very so widely you know we need to develop an understanding what we mean by democracy collaboration empathy yes very important empowerment and hopefully our empowerment is something that we come to us as we do our action research on our on our on our project caring respect empowerment creativity collaboration love tolerance and respect empathy and you know there was a time like where love wouldn't ever fit into wouldn't ever fit into an action research project whereas now we can say you know with our hands our heads held high that we hold love as a value and there are many action research projects that I could point you to if you want to that actually has love as a value that's great thank you for sharing those for me and you will find them again I guess in our in our final video when the time comes okay so we need to do a little bit of writing as well maybe and I'm just going to suggest gentle writing nothing too difficult and but it's important for us to write a reflective journal do you remember I said at the very beginning that we take time to pause and reflect so reflection isn't just something that happens as we're driving home from work or as we're doing our shopping or as we're brushing our teeth in the morning although we do reflect but the hard work from it actually comes in the writing of a journal so anybody who's going to do an action research project you would need to go and get by yourself a notebook buy one that you like maybe buy one that you can bring with you anywhere you want to go and that whole idea of writing reflectively I would say just begin off and just give yourself 10 minutes 15 minutes of peace in the evening after your day's work and just have a think just let your consciousness stream and just write because your journal is for you and for you only you don't have to use academic language you don't have to use any of the conventions that we normally enforce on writing your journals for you and just have a think about your day and about the things that happened that were important for you and and have a play around with the ideas around maybe your values and try to figure out what your values are and what's happening in your place of work in your equining project specifically so you can write as honestly as you want and also perhaps even write critically you can always revisit your reflections and think about them twice or think about them three times that's called being reflexive and it's well worth doing because you find over time you change and you change your thinking okay so forming a research question if you're going to go on and do an action research project it's always a good idea to form a research question so asking yourself questions like what am i concerned about what am i interested in curious about like we just did and asking yourself why this is the case which we'll do in a few minutes and help you to form that research question because you begin to take notice of what is really important for you right now and obviously we place I myself at the heart of the question and I think it's important for you to you know when you're thinking about a research project and a research question that your research focus is small and manageable and doable that you know you're not trying to change the world with this project and while your project may begin to do something to change the world for now it's good to have it achievable and perhaps maybe not too time consuming especially for your first you know if you're just dipping your toes in the process for the first time ensure that your question is also debatable that it just doesn't have a yes no type of answer because then there's no you know there's no fruit to be born from doing the project you try to tie it in with the values you hold and obviously it should be something to do with your e-twinning project and because that's why we're all here today okay so types of data that we might be able to collect in our action research project okay say I've kind of two columns here now I'm not sure how many of them are suitable for your own workplace but they're worth a try okay so ways we can collect data in schools is through conversations which are really important and observations so conversations with our students with our colleagues with our principals with whoever parents community are e-twinning partners the observations we make in the process artifacts if we're making things if students are writing things all these are important photos and videos now I know there are problems sometimes in schools with ethical permissions and stuff so you obviously need to check that before you you know you take photographs or videos or anything like that copy books exercise books pupils comments parents views colleagues observations interviews questionnaires you can make up a questionnaire to find out the information you're really seeking free tests and post post tests can help and surveys can help as well so the ones on the left hand side are considered qualitative forms of data collection and they're considered to be qualitative forms of research and methods and the ones on the right are considered to be quantitative it's not relevant but just to highlight it for you it's not very important but just to show you what would be involved one of the main sources of that I think is our research journal okay and the research journal is key so that's why I'm saying go and buy your buy your notebook pretty soon and have it ready and start writing in it immediately you know what even if you never undertake an action research project getting a reflective journal and using it and revisiting your ideas is a really good it's a good healthy thing to do for yourself even okay ongoing tasks for the duration of the research process so once you've gone to address your questions what am I concerned about and why am I concerned you're beginning to put in place the foundations of your research so right throughout the research project the interconnection between reading and talking and writing is being emphasized and hopefully that you would see connection between those things as you begin to do that kind of more formal part of the research and it's good I suppose to reflect on and to name your values to read professionally and to talk and to share your ideas with your critical friends or indeed anybody who listened to you are engaged in the process okay so I'm revisiting now our plan that we did that I showed you and I said we're focusing on the first two questions so we did what is my concern or my area of interest or what am I passionate about and now I'm moving on to the second one which is why am I concerned why am I interested why am I passionate and it's something that has to be addressed and it's a difficult it's a far more difficult question so be ready for it now again um you know people just find it easy enough to answer what are my concerns my areas of interest this one is a different one it's why am I concerned or why am I interested passionate and so on so let's try another mentee so the code for this mentee is you can see it there 5182985 and as I say it's a more difficult one why am I concerned now try it okay these things are not going to be held up for you to um you know to sign off on or anything like that this is just we're just playing with the ideas dipping our toe in the water so try and get your answer in there or even to begin to think about it I'm not expecting really you know deep insightful answers just on the hop like this but it's something you can play with in your notebook once you buy your reflective journal are you still here I think we lost her give us one moment and we'll be back in the meantime yeah please feel free to write your comments on the chat yes marine you're back yeah we are muted marine sorry I don't know what happened there but if you put in your um yes so if you put in your stuff there on the chat um okay and I'm going to try I wonder can I just share I've only a few minutes left here anyway so um if you put in your comments on or even the mentee actually I think was the idea yeah um okay sorry about that I'm not sure what happened with the connection okay so um I'm just going to try and get my slides up again if I can you know what I'm going to do is I'm just going to talk through the next but this final section because there's only a minute or two in it and I was wasting my time looking around for my slides um on on on in the internet okay so it's always a good to have um it's always a good idea to have um some form of report when you have done your research process okay so we're tying the whole idea of doing the research that's based on our values once we have established what they are and how we'd like to improve our practice so it's a good idea to try and um write up some kind of a report or make up some kind of a presentation to show your new learning to show the theory you've generated for others and so um like if you need to decide what your research report is going to look like or who you're going to share it with so for many people they just want to have a chat with their maybe their colleagues and say this was my learning and my action research project but for others they like something a little bit more formal and so the format of writing a more formal report usually has a couple of elements like say the abstract the introduction the literature review you chose your reading the methodology you've done an action research project the findings and discussions what did you learn in terms of improved practice what did you learn in terms of enhancing your practice and what did you learn about living more closely to your values and your conclusion of where you think your research should go from there and they're the basic elements of um an action research report of a more formal one but of course you need to do that but I think no matter what you do you should decide to try and share your research with others um when you have it done so sharing your research with others you can do it informally um and you can do it with colleagues in your school or you could maybe write a blog about it or do a podcast perhaps whatever suits your own um interest for formal things you could consider um submitting it to an academic journal such as e-jolts or perhaps um the action research journal or present even your findings at a conference an education conference people would be really interested to hear how you did your action research on um on an e-twinning project okay my final two slides so Effie are the people going to see these slides I'm wondering now that I'm not sharing them we're going to share the slides too yes brilliant okay so I've just two recommended pieces of reading that if you are really interested in this so your first piece um is a fabulous little it's just a little word document on Jean Magnif's website and you'll find the link on these final slides when Effie gets to share them I'd really recommend it it's a very readable encouraging piece it's just a short little piece of it you know it won't take you 20 minutes 15 minutes to read it or less even um and it's kind of inspiring and it's encouraging and it shows how doable an action research project is and the second one is an introduction to critical reflection in action for teachers which is a book um that my colleagues and I wrote and so somebody's asking can I share the link here I'm not sure that I can I'll have a go okay and that was my final thing that I had to say um but so I would like you if you have any questions or indeed Effie if you picked up on anything there that people would like to ask I'd be more than willing to answer questions I'll try and find those links now okay thanks Marine I haven't seen a specific question yet related to your presentation but I would like to invite participants to share them now or comment on something that they would like to discuss further in the last minutes before we close this webinar um in the meantime I would like yeah to thank you very much Marine I think it's very interesting to hear how we can bring these research elements in our practice teachers in general they need to be better prepared to to implement action research in their in their own practices because yeah actually they're they are collecting this kind of results every day they are in the classrooms they are testing um different approaches different techniques different activities methods so if we just yeah just follow the the main elements of research this input can provide us um yeah very viable feedback for our practices so it's um it's a very good practice to to follow if we want to improve in general as practitioners yeah the participants marine also thank you very much for the inspirational presentation not sure if you are still here and you hear us now I've lost you any other questions that you would like to ask to the speaker please um yeah take some time and write it now in the chat your back marine hi you're muted again I don't know what's happening with your connection I don't know either yeah no worries no worries it happens in online events live events well any any final last words from your side um I don't really I'm not sure if that link went in there or not but it would be on the slides anyway um but I would really encourage you to do it I know okay so I'm retired from teaching and I didn't get the opportunity to be involved in each winning but I did get involved in convenience projects and I did huge really really good um in my own view anyway really good action research on those projects which were collaborative and which were international and which you know explored different cultures using different classroom projects I would really recommend that you try it and if I can be of any help to anybody please just give me a shout drop me an email thank you marine actually I see one question here uh one participant says that did winning projects focus on collaboration and teamwork however action research is a bit individual so what are the strategies to draw them together what's your answer on that just say it again I didn't I didn't actually get to see it what do we see so so the participant says that it winning projects focus on collaboration and teamwork but the action research is a bit of individual task so how are these two different uh yeah okay so my answer to that is yes action research is about focusing on your practice but it's your practice in the teamwork in the collaboration with others in the connections you're making throughout your each winning um and also if you wish you could also do a joint action research project with your colleagues in in your each winning circle as well if you like but I would recommend if you're new to it it's good to try it on your own first but it's never an introverted kind of a thing it's always looking out it's about making connections and researching along with your partners and with children or students in your class and it's always with others yeah one more question regarding the permissions in doing research do you recommend us to have we have parents permission when we have a practice that is intended to be used as research even if it's just an innovative practice that is embedded in our class or in our curriculum so the question is about asking for parents permission when teachers are testing a practice as a research practice actually yeah I think it's always important to be as ethical as we can you know especially if we're going to be collecting data so yeah I would I would I would always air on the side of caution and to be as careful as we can and to ensure that we meet as many ethical expectations as we can and set the bar very high for ourselves yeah especially if we if we plan to publish the results of our research oh my goodness yeah absolutely yeah 100 yeah okay then I think that's it for today many thanks to all the participants who joined and they spent this one hour with us it was lovely to have you on board in this live webinar many thanks marine for the very interesting presentation always a pleasure to to work together and I wish you a nice evening and yeah I keep on researching to improve practices and keep on learning and developing professionally okay thank you very much everybody thank you for your input sorry for falling off the internet a couple of times and hopefully I'll meet up with you again sometime take care