IA Grant Opportunity

[Mia Beesley <MiaBoBia@AOL.COM>]

I've posted this before, but since school will be getting out soon, I thought
more of you might have time to write your proposals...

IEMA Grant Opportunity

The school library media profession is characterized by constant change and
complex integration with all aspects of the school. A wide variety of
questions confront school library media specialists every day:

What happens to my time?

How much time does it take for me to set web bookmarks, create pathfinders,
and gather together resources for a research projects my students are doing?

How well do students learn from an on-screen tutorial about how to search
our catalog?

Now that I have gone to flexible scheduling, how many students do not come
to the media center each week? What strategies can I employ to increase
their access?

How do students' self-assessment of their research work compare with their
teacher's assessment?

What is the effect of booktalking in the classroom each week on circulation
of those books for the school year?

What do students remember after they have "read" an electronic picture
book? Is it different from what they remember after they have "read" a
print book?

Are student projects better because of the use of rubrics? In what specific
ways?

Does giving students choices in what their end products will be affect
their engagement?

How long does it take before a computer must be upgraded to continue to do
the task for which it was purchased?

These and hundreds of other questions can be raised as we think about what
happens in school library media centers.

The IEMA Research Committee wants to support building-level library media
specialists in seeking answers to their professional quandaries by
supporting action research. Action research simply involves systematically
examining whatever you are doing. An action research plan includes these
steps:
        1.      Clearly state your question and describe why it is important.
        2.      List your objective: What change are you looking for?
        3.      Outline what you already know about this question (e.g.,
                from experiences, from the research literature)
        4.      Decide what information to collect and how to collect it.
        5.      Collect the information and organize it.
        6.      Analyze the information for ideas which will help answer your
question.
        7.      Draw conclusions based on the information you have collected.
                This required reflection on what works? what doesn't work? why?
        8.      Share your conclusions with others.

Action research can be a way of closely looking at something going on in
one setting, systematically studying that practice, reflecting on
observations , and arriving at some conclusions. While action research may
not be directly generalizable to other settings, it has value in many ways.
When its results are shared, it gives other professionals ideas of how to
systematically look at their own practices. It suggests solutions to
problems that have worked in one place and may be adaptable to another. It
may provide a way for teacher and library media specialist to examine
collaboratively something they are doing. Action research can help us
improve student learning, or it can provide data that we can use for
advocacy.

What does IEMA propose? A Grant program will offer IEMA members the
opportunity to propose an action research project to investigate some
practice in their program. The winning proposal will receive a $500 grant
to carry out the project, half the funding will be provided at the
beginning of the project and half at the end. The funding may be used in a
variety of ways, e.g., to provide substitutes to allow time for work on the
project. to support printing if survey instruments are needed, to purchase
software needed for the project, to provide travel funding for the action
researcher to attend a conference and present findings. The expectations
are that the project can be accomplished in one school year and that the
results of the project will be presented at the IEMA conference as a
concurrent session.

Proposals for the first grant will be due August 1, 1998. Application forms
will be available at the IEMA Spring Conference.

To learn more about "action research," see any of the following:
School Libraries Worldwide, Volume 3, Number 2 (July, 1997). The entire
issue focuses on Action Research.
Flake, C.L., T. Kuhs, and C. Ebert. "Reinventing the role of teacher:
Teacher as researcher," Phi Delta Kappan 76 (1995), p 405+.
Sagor, Richard. How to Conduct Collaborative Action Research. ASCD, 1992.

Jean Donham, Ph. D. (IEMA research committee chair)
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Science
The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
jean-donham@uiowa.edu

Mia Beesley (IEMA research committee member)
Library Media Specialist
Jefferson Elementary
Bettendorf, IA
MiaBoBia@aol.com

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