Action Research Determined

One of the topics I discussed early in my internship with my site supervisor, Mr. Fuller, was campus discipline. We both indicated it would be a terrific action research to identify the most common discipline infraction (with the exception of tardies), what consequences were assigned for this infraction and who seemed to repeat the infraction the most. Since then, another more pressing discipline issue has arisen. We have had several students repeatedly visit the AP’s office and exhausted our discipline consequences such as ISS, OSS, and DAEP. The question is how to intervene early in the process before a student is assigned to an alternative campus.
Another topic that I discussed with my site supervisor was teaming. Teaming was new to our campus last year. We are interested in finding out the effectiveness of teaming on the overall campus culture. Another area we were interested in was the effect teaming had on student interventions and success.
Finally I was assigned a project we called “Eagles Camp”. This was an overall orientation and induction for our students during the first two days of instruction. The purpose of Eagles Camp was to establish our campus culture and set high expectations early in the year. The action research would be to determine if the orientation had any effect on the overall school climate through a study of discipline referrals and early common assessments.

The topic we decided I would investigate would be a qualitative study of alternative discipline techniques as an overall early intervention. The purpose of this study would be to explore alternatives to traditional discipline consequences like detention, or In School Suspension. We feel that if the campus adopts a discipline plan or character education program then it is possible our students would be less at risk for severe discipline consequences.