Mentoring graduate students through the action research journey using guiding principles

Abstract

Our department has adopted action research (AR) projects as the culminating task for our master’s degree candidates. This article presents our work on mentoring graduate students towards the completion of their final AR research projects and details the deliberate structures put in place to guide them through the AR process. These structures include a full-semester course, individual meetings with an AR chair, and collaborative faculty–student feedback sessions. These collaborative conversations (between students and faculty) have allowed us to clarify our understandings of AR, set standards and goals for AR, and raise our expectations on the quality of final AR projects. We hope that the discussion in this article will give students assigned AR new insights as they conduct their research. Also, we hope that the guiding principles we have derived through our efforts can inform others who currently use or plan to assign AR to their students.

Keywords:

• Teacher preparation
• graduate students
• apprenticeship
• thesis

Notes

1. Our school includes departments of Leadership Studies; School, Family, and Mental Health Professions; and Learning and Teaching. Together, our school prepares students for organizational leadership, non-profit work, K–12 and higher education administration, school and career counseling, marriage and family therapy professions, and K–16 teaching.