to solve real-world problems in Mumbai, and from “flipping” classroom instruction to experimenting with
mobile technology in classrooms, interest in this work has spread throughout the school. In fact, several
new faculty members cite the existence of an R&D department as a contributing factor to their successful
recruitment to ASB. The R&D Team has nearly doubled in size from 11 members in 2011 to 20 members
in 2013. Other faculty members have indicated interest in exploring and studying new practices and
approaches and applying their learning to transform their own classroom practices and environments.
Educators at ASB are looking for ways to “R&D” teaching and learning in their classrooms. It is out of this
pattern of development that the R&D department designed and developed an Action Research tool called
The Workbook.
At its most basic, action research is a “process” that links and “embeds action and research” (Townsend,
2013, p. 10). In the case of schools, action research enables a community of practitioners to understand,
re-design, or create new practices and environments for teaching and learning. Action research doesn’t
just create new knowledge at the institutional level, but it creates knowledge and insight for those that
engage in the process of action research.
Designing The Workbook
The starting place for designing The Workbook was to create an action research tool
that would lower the barriers to research by improving educator access and ease of use.
The R&D department wanted to create a one-stop tool where teachers could quickly
learn and reference the basic fundamentals of action research and then move
seamlessly into planning, conducting, documenting, and sharing their research, all using
the same tool. To start, a visual model was created to show the continuous interaction
between exploring, prototyping, and transforming and the basic flow of an inquiry
based on the ASB Information Fluency Model. The visual model was a call to educators
to “be the fire and wish for the wind” in their own professional learning.
First This
Information
Fluency Model