56 operations related to the teaching and learning process Mills, 2011; Creswell,
2012. The main purpose of action research is to facilitate a practitioner to improve the quality of students’ learning and their own professional performance
Creswell, 2012. In the participatory action research, the process must be participatory, emancipatory, and empowering Kemmis, et al., 2014, p.9.
Therefore, the stages in action research were performed together with teacher collaborators and participants being involved in the research environment in order
to solve the communally identified problems. This is because the key of carrying out action research for a researcher is engaging people acting as the participants to
voluntary take parts for improving the quality of their lives, particularly in their English language study.
In educational context , there are four broad areas of teachers’ interests that
become the focus of action research as presented by Fischer 2001 as cited in Burns 2010, p. 24:
a Your teaching and making changes in teaching; b your learners and how they learn; c your interaction with the current
curriculum and with curriculum innovation; d your teaching beliefs and philosophies and their connections with daily practice.
In this study, the main interests to investigate were the first and second points.
The conduct of action research was initiated by major authors in its field, Kemmis and McTaggart 1988, and its cyclical procedures have become the basis
of the modification of more recent action research cycles e.g. Stringer, 2007; Mills, 2011; Kemmis, et al., 2014. Overall, the basic principles of action research
are planning, acting, observing, and reflecting Burns, 2010. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
57 This action research model is illustrated in an action research cycle as
displayed in figure 3.1. This overall cycle may be done only once, or continued or repeated until the researcher and the participants have achieved the satisfactory
outcome within a particular period of time. Regardless of this widely known and widely
used model, the process of action research in reality is “likely to become more fluid, open, and responsive” Kemmis, et al., 2014, p.18.
Figure 3.1 The action research spiral based on Kemmis McTaggart 2014, p.19 Obtaining both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze, this action
research applied the mixed-method design. There are some advantages of conducting mixed-method research. One is that the combination of both types of
data can provide a better understanding of a research problem Mertler, 2009.
B. RESEARCH DESIGN
Basically, the overall design of the research adopted the action research cycle Kemmis McTaggart, 1988; Kemmis et al., 2014. However, before
58 coming into the cycles, the researcher did a series of stages prior to the research.
Once the focus of the study was generated, the process of reconnaissance was undertaken. Mills 2011 suggests that the researcher conducts reconnaissance,
which is a “preliminary information gathering” p. 42 through self-reflection, description and explanation. Self-reflection is the activity of reflecting the area of
focus in light or the researcher’s values and beliefs on teaching and learning in the context of the study field. Description includes describing the situation that
needed to be improved as well as the evidence that shows that the situation is really a problem. In description, the critical factors that affect the focus area are
also identified. Lastly, explanation includes explaining the investigated situation by hypothesizing how and why the critical factors identified affect that situation
Mills, 2011, p. 44. Practically, I conducted reconnaissance by recalling my past experience in
teaching the same group of students in the same place and reflected the problems existing there, which was caused by the
students’ different proficiency levels. In order to confirm this as a real problem, I conducted an informal interview with the
head of the Novitiate prior to the beginning of the research. Kemmis, et al. 2014 suggest that the steps in participatory action
research are best undertaken collaboratively with co-participants. Therefore, two other teacher collaborators were involved in the research project. Similarly, the
students taking parts in this research were also regarded as participants, in which they were involved and invited to give contributions and take control in some
parts as an empowerment of themselves. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
59 The sequence of this research began with a pre-test conducted to collect
empirical data on students’ level of initial proficiency. Also, the students were to
give responses to a pre-program questionnaire, in which their initial collaborative learning skill was analyzed. These were performed because at the end of the
action research, the results obtained from the pre-test and the pre-program questionnaire were compared to other test results as well as post-program
questionnaire responses in order to investigate students’ improvement in terms of
English speaking competence and collaboration skills. In order to answer the first research question, all the participants involving
in the research, including the teacher researcher, two teacher collaborators, and nine students were gathered in a mini-workshop to have a preliminary discussion
on the research concept. In the preliminary discussion meeting or mini-workshop, all the participants were encouraged to have a reflection on the potential problems
that could exist in their classroom. Subsequently, they were to state their ideas on suitable solutions to solve the problem. To avoid confusion and perplexity, the
researcher had prepared some optional solutions that other participants might approve, namely differentiated instruction strategies. The goal of this workshop
session was for all participants to formulate an action to solve existing problems in the speaking class through communal consensus, and most importantly, to
investigate whether differentiated instruction principles were incorporated in the taken action.
At the end of this mini-workshop, all participants were expected not only to come up with an agreement with some solutions to solve the problems, but also
