Action Research Plan

A Look at Blended Learning, Flipped Lessons & the Elementary Music Classroom

The field of teaching is rapidly changing. Learners of the 21st Century are growing up with affordable and accessible technology at their fingertips. According to the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, there are three main areas that we MUST teach our children: Learning and innovation skills, information, media, and technology skills, and life and career skills and music does it all! (Hobizal & Peek-Davis, 2017)

There is not an abundance of research on the benefits of blended learning and flipped lesson design in the music classroom setting. My research study will hopefully help other music teachers avoid the challenges of conquering the unknown.

Planning Stage:

In this course, I focused on the planning stage of our action research plan. After looking at problems that have hindered learning in my 4th grade recorder classes and asking myself the hard question of why this happens, I narrowed down my topics and discovered what my fundamental research question will be.

Does the implementation of flipped lessons increase achievement levels across all sections of the 4th grade recorder class?

Now that my research had a question to focus on, I made a basic outline of my research plan.

(click image to the right to view outline)

I then took a look at "The 7 Skills Students Need for their Future" by Tony Wagner

and

"The Seven Essential Life Skills, With Ellen Galinsky | Big Think Mentor

As digital leaders in our districts, our job is to look at the future possibilities of our learners. We are training our kids for jobs that haven't been created yet. Fields that haven't been invented yet. We can't teach them like we learned in the past. Instead of teaching concrete facts and making kids work in our style, we have to teach them how to learn in their own unique ways. We have to teach them to develop the skills they need for the future. Like I recently said in a job interview, I might not have all the knowledge that I need, but I know how to learn it and where to find it.

This is my "Why" for doing action research. As a teacher, I need to continuously monitor and study my teaching and my student's achievements to make sure that I am doing everything in my power to pass on the skills they need to be successful in whatever field they choose.

In order to determine what research has already been done in the areas of blended learning and flipped classrooms in the music setting, I created a literature review. I discovered that there really was not much research done on flipping music classrooms, especially in the primary classroom. I did find helpful information about types of research that could be used to determine the effectiveness of blended learning and instruments for data collection.

With this knowledge in hand, I created a full Action Plan for my research that will begin to move into the Acting Phase this fall.

I cannot wait to begin working with blended learning in my classroom. The potential is there for it to have a great impact on my learners achievements in music. I know that several questions and areas of future study will arise as my learners and I begin this journey. There is so little research in the area of blended learning in the elementary music classroom, that anything we study and accomplish will provide valuable information as we move forward in the digital age.