Doing Action Research: The Experience of Teachers in Seychelles

Raymond Ndubisi Anyanwu,Rosianna Jules

doi:10.37284/eajes.5.1.528

Raymond Ndubisi Anyanwu, Rosianna Jules

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.37284/eajes.5.1.528

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Abstract

Action research is regarded as a dynamic strategy to galvanise teachers to determine what works best for them and their pupils. Teachers’ experience in action research has been investigated in some developing countries without involving any of the small island states in the Indian Ocean. Hence, this study explored the experience of teachers from Seychelles regarding action research focusing on their understanding of the nature, meaning, and purpose of action research; the benefits they gained from doing action research; the difficulties and the challenges they encountered while conducting action research, including their background characteristics. Its aim was to identify their successes, concerns, and issues. Participants were 33 primary school teachers enrolled in the two-year Advanced Diploma programme at the Seychelles Institute of Education during the 2019/2020 academic year. One of their assessment tasks required them to identify a difficulty that their pupils encounter and conduct action research on it with a view to finding a solution. Data collected using a self-reporting questionnaire designed by the investigators was analysed using both descriptive and interpretive techniques. Results indicated that the participants had a mixed experience of successes, concerns, and issues.

Highlights

Teachers used to expect outsiders to offer solutions to the problems they and their pupils encountered in the classroom
In an effort to close these gaps, the present study investigates the experience of teachers in Seychelles regarding action research with the aim to identify their successes, concerns, and issues, so that training institutions will take them into consideration in future programme delivery
Thirty-eight teachers holding the Diploma in Education were enrolled in the two-year Advanced Diploma (AD) programme, with at least one trainee from each state primary school sponsored by the Ministry of Education

Summary

Introduction

Teachers used to expect outsiders to offer solutions to the problems they and their pupils encountered in the classroom. Experience is the lived, first-hand acquaintance with, and account of, the entire span of our minds and actions, with the emphasis not on the context of the action but on the immediate and embodied, and inextricably personal, nature of the content of the action (Depraz, Varela & Vermersch, 2003). This definition implies that a single action or event can be experienced in different ways by different individuals, and can be expressed through self-talk, self-writing, or self-narration (Daher et al, 2017; Roth & Jornet, 2014)

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