Action Research Reflection 1

Running head: ACTION RESEARCH REFLECTION PAPER

Action Research Reflection Paper

C. Barnes Gallagher

University of Phoenix

Applications of Action Research

EDD580

Dr. Y.L. Trahan

Nov 17, 2008

 Action Research Reflection 2

Abstract

Transformational grammar refers to the diction of subpopulations that researchers address in

conjunction to differential item functioning (DIF) and equitable test items. Psychometrics and

linguistics include ongoing analysis of subpopulations and subgroup responses. Noam Chomsky

has impressed the literary world with surface and deep grammatical structures that have

influenced a universal grammar upon that test devisers address in respect to DIF. Dr. Jim Gator

analyzes one side of the drawback that action researchers face in the field to which my action

research project refers; the other drawback revolves about greenhouse affects and unpredictable

national disaster.
 Action Research Reflection 3

Action Research Reflection Paper

Teachers have a responsibility to implement national and state standards as they

implement curriculum and align their instruction with recognized accuracy, thus integrating

meaning among subpopulations. Communicative tasks and reasoning skills are essential to each

viable community, and as this nation is transcending to a multi-linguistic and pluralistic society,

each citizen must strive to follow established policies and regulations. The completing of this

action research process compels my concern for latent traits of subpopulations that strive for

meaning through definitions, spellings, and usage that they must dissect as linguists nonetheless

strive for a universal language. Referring to the probability that members of separate subgroups

may respond differently to problems, differential item functioning (DIF) is a concern of

educators who analyze magnitudes of test items for internal validity. I did not cover every aspect

pertaining to DIF, differential predictions, and ethnicity analysis. Therefore, I have gleaned from

the action research process a cause to further investigate ongoing process of DIF in respect to

civic justice.

Because language acquisition is important to subpopulations of nonnative speakers of the

English language who must decipher between British and English idioms midst a hodgepodge of

diverse media, some criteria such as high school grade point average continue to be reviewed by

college admission officers as over-predictions of minority student achievement. Most Americans

prefer to consider the value of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) rather than the Graduate

Record Exam (GRE). This is no conjecture. The ratio of graduate university students to members

of the nonprofessional job market is substantial. Educational standards vary considerably from

country to country although the worldwide ETS is generating a cohesive global economy and

academic system. Although I am considering literacy rates in respect to the GRE, most laborers
 Action Research Reflection 4

focus on literacy rates in respect to high school graduation. These issues are part of the

standards-based reform movement and “student-involved” assessment that must be “consistent

with instruction,” relationships that are based in the Educational Testing Service (ETS) (Conley,

2005, p. 149).

In contrast to the bereft dollars associated with graduate school, SAT scores and grade

point averages evoke the support of a society dependent on industrialism, health care, and

diplomatic relations—a hologram of civilian need is turning the pendulum. Most students and

parents of subpopulations may express grief and alienation over the barriers inherent in the

complex British-English diction. Although quality assessments should be regarded as formative

organic processes that continue to produce new cells, they nonetheless maintain a link with an

explorative psychological reality that linguists review in conjunction to jargon, a language

weighed both by deliverer and recipient. Unlike Europe, the United States frontier is yet

plentiful; however, its miles affect transportation costs. Economists manage politics and

education, and the population is replete in adolescents entering their first year of college;

however, a smaller portion of that population will prepare for graduate school. Though I should

focus on the SAT, I focus on the GRE as one standardized learning tool that includes problems

common of contemporary occupation. The words “professional” and “laborer” evoke numerous

controversial connotations that a restless society may ignore.

Already I have noted the function of learning theories and cognition. Having approached

the subject of transformational learning, I admit that I did not reach the topic of transformational

grammar, the psychological reality that is essential to our study of communication. Language is

dependent not only on the deliverer but on the recipient--the effect of language reception is

obvious: When a child is restricted to environments where grammars are confined, then the
 Action Research Reflection 5

child’s speech will reflect constraint. Learning from those with whom he or she interacts, not

only the child will be affected by obstacles imposed by diverse languages that may encumber

anyone, preventing him or her from performing to community standards, standards that may vary

by school, church, profession, socioeconomics, and demographics. Inherent communicative

capacities are inhibited when the language faculty is immensely restrained. Language fluency

and retention rates fluctuate in respect to underlying intuition, abstract techniques serving to

overcome communicative barriers.

My action research project focuses on topics intrinsic to everyone at every age because

language and learning are transformational, receptive and affected by idiomatic barriers,

differential item functioning that pertains to no exclusive population. The problem requires much

more research of differential item functioning and latent traits characteristic of subgroups within

a pluralistic society. I have only introduced the problem pertaining to phobias for the GRE and

idiomatic barriers

Survival instincts are innate to my active research of phonic and semantic impressions as

judgments regarding acceptability are inherent to the recipient of constrained language barriers.

The child must rely on communicative evidence so as to acquire accessible language skills.

Unfortunately, that rightful potential may be degenerate, fraught with imperfection, causes for

linguists and translators to universalize nomenclatures and syntactic conventions. Ideally,

community members meet together to recognize and to protect common interests, challenges that

require workable communication skills and standards, stated or implied. Diverse styles,

however, sever the United States; rural, urban, and tribal issues pose the need for a psychological

reality, an institutional conscience that members of learning institutions at all levels must

address.
 Action Research Reflection 6

My successful action research project may have been inhibited by my lapse of focus on a

very esoteric subject, differential item functioning, subpopulations, and latent traits that action

researchers address as they compile test items. When test devisers note moderate affects of DIF

in respect to the meaning that the test item evokes to subpopulations, the test devisers eliminate

the test item from the test. Everyone on every campus should be concerned about kernel equating

methods, average residual values, differential validity, and score equity analysis. These topics do

pertain to the fair assessment of test items and the fair administration of standardized tests from

every stage of their development.

Perhaps Political Science Professor Jim Dator is accurate as he projects the future of the

University in respect to consequences imposed by the Second World War, financial security that

threatens educational research and development. Dator notes that research and development have

flourished as “a true bang for the buck”—he maintains that legislators, religious congregations,

philanthropists, and parents disregard liberal education as an “elevating and cultivating pretense”

and that they do not like to fund “institutions of higher education just so some few pointy-headed

intellectuals may pursue truth” (Dator, 2005, p. 203). I have observed and experienced the words

of Dator to such a paralyzing degree. Human nature is rampant in defeat as temperatures about

the Arctic diminish as a result of greenhouse affects. A significant and deleterious area of the ice

cap has melted, affecting not only Atlantic and Greenland navigation and commerce, for

example, but mammalian life. As they attempt to predict and control testing and educational

equity, researchers fear poorly designed and poorly maintained levees. The extent of my action

research is inhibited by fears and latent traits that differential item functioning should and does

include.
 Action Research Reflection 7

Dator describes a new Dark Ages that cannot rest its case while card catalogues and

inventories have been replaced by digital methods that are not realistically accessible to those

who cannot afford the expenses associated with motherboard upgrades. When power fails due to

natural phenomenon and disaster, individual civilians and governmental authorities alike are

deprived of important records that become inaccessible as they are needed the most. Perhaps

Dator accurately describes the collapsing financial cards that are diminishing as a result of

“consumer, corporate, and national debt” contrary to “the supply and demand of a ‘free market’”

(Dator, 2005, p. 209). The new resources and skill sets that may assist my continual growth to

develop in my professional life revolve around these issues presented by Professor Dator.

6. What are some challenges? How did you overcome them?

Some challenges of my action research refer to insufficient examples of language that

may be constrained, limiting the learning faculty. How may the inhibited child or individual of

any age devise relevant grammatical standards about his or her cognation? This issue is

especially critical as a child is at a very impressionable stage—parents and teachers maintain

mandatory roles that depend on empirical references and documentation; children are easily

impressed and conditioned. Discounting potential linguistic rules, the poorly influenced or

neglected child may become dependent on “genetic help” through an inherent vitalism, an

intuitive Language Acquisition Device (LAD). The Language Faculty or LAD serves as an

insightful abstract filter of possible and impossible rules. As the child familiarizes himself or

herself with secure linguistic structures, he or she develops an innate biological system based on

endowed insight for natural language and Universal Grammar, the human language faculty. Ones

“reliance on structure-dependent operations must be predetermined for the language-learner by a

restrictive initial schematic of some sort that directs his or her attempts to acquire linguistic
 Action Research Reflection 8

competence”—Chomsky described the “mind as a mirror” from the perspective of a universal

linguist (Chomsky, Language and Mind (1972a), p. 63). Chomsky’s generative and

transformational grammar are important to researchers who devise equitable tests and who

analyze morphology, syntax, and semantics—topics of differential item functioning that

researchers analyze in conjunction to all levels of communication.

 Action Research Reflection 9

References

Chomsky, N. (1972a). Language and mind. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch.

Conley, M. W. (2005). Connecting standards and assessment through literacy (1st ed.). Des

Moines, Iowa, and abroad: Allyn and Bacon, Pearson Education.

Dator, J. (2005). Universities without "quality" and quality without "universities". On the

Horizon, 13(4), 199-215. Retrieved November 10, 2008, from ProQuest Education

Journals database. (Document ID: 943627971).

Santicola, B. (2008, November). U.S. Government Technology Grants. Retrieved November 15,

2008, from http://www.us-government-grants.net/articles.php/tPath/7