Action research in special education: An interview

Note: The article is being reproduced from Meri News from the link at the end of the write-up

When it was thought to introduce action research in special education at Disha, Jaipur, proposed by me and forming a research group of three functionaries including Dr Savita Jagawat, a clinical psychologist at the institute; a special educator and me.

An interview of mine (Dr. Lalit Kishore) was proposed to understand the concept of action research. For learning and understanding a concept from an expert as a respondent, structured interview with closed-ended questions of what, why and how are asked for specific pieces of information.

"Action research in special education is the practitioner's systematic research to improve his or her practice along with addressing learning and the social justice needs of differently abled children through self-reflection leading to improved interventions," I said, when asked the question about what of action research. To the question related to why of action research, my response was, "There is so much of diversity among children with special needs, the content and classroom intervention need to be researched through action research plans and made relevant and effective.

The individual educational plans are needed to be matched to the children's assessment by clinical psychologist and intervention developed, researched while being implementing so as to improve practice to benefit children with special needs. The children with special needs require improved opportunities and better interventions to learn to their optimal potential with teachers' efforts.

Therefore, the special educators have to assume the role of teacher-researchers or action researchers." When asked how to promote action research among special educators, I replied, "Start with one or two teachers, provide them orientation in action research, plan an action research, implement it with collection of data, help special educator to self-reflect on the data and make recommendations for designing improved opportunities.

So, initially, on-job orientation, support, hand-holding and mastery on the action research procedure and report writing skills are required so as to make the special educator a spontaneous action researcher."

"Thus, there is a need for the special educators to build a culture of action research through in-house training and developing action research plans instead of using hackneyed and meaningless lesson plans as a checklist ," I summed up.