Building Your Proposal
Building Your Proposal
What the proposal is
A short written plan that names the problem, the question, the sample, the variables, the tools, the intervention, the ethics plan, the timeline, and the reflection plan.
Length
Two to four pages for a B.Ed. action research project. Long enough to be useful, short enough to be honest.
Order to fill in
Problem first. Then question and objective. Then sample and variables. Then tools and intervention. Then ethics and timeline. Reflection plan last.
Goal
A document you can hand to a critical friend, a supervisor, or yourself at the end of cycle 1, and use to defend every choice you made.
What a Proposal Does for You
A proposal is not paperwork. It is the document that protects your study from drifting. When you write the proposal you force yourself to be specific. The template in the next article gives you the structure. This article explains how to use it.
A finished proposal does four things at once:
- It names the problem in one sentence that a colleague could read and recognize.
- It commits you to a question that is small enough to answer in one term.
- It records the data tools and the intervention so cycle 2 can build on cycle 1 without guessing.
- It documents the ethics plan so consent and harm are dealt with before the action stage, not after.
Length and tone
Two to four pages is enough. Use simple sentences. Keep the headings in the template order so anyone who reads it knows where to look.
Order to fill the template
Do not try to write the template from top to bottom in one sitting. Use this order:
- Problem statement. What is going wrong in your classroom and how do you know.
- Research question and objective. Write the question first, then the matching “To…” objective.
- Population and sample. Whose problem is it? Who will you study?
- Variables. Independent variable (the change you introduce). Dependent variable (the outcome you measure).
- Data collection tools. At least two, so you can triangulate.
- Intervention plan. Concrete, repeatable steps with a schedule.
- Ethics plan. Consent, assent, privacy, do no harm, no disadvantage.
- Timeline. Pre-test, four to six weeks of action, post-test, reflection.
- Reflection plan. When and how you will sit with the data and write the reflection.
What a critical friend should be able to do with your proposal
A critical friend should be able to read the proposal in ten minutes and:
- Tell you whether the question is researchable in one term.
- Spot any variable that is too vague to measure.
- Notice if the ethics plan is thin.
- Point at one or two confounding variables you missed.
If the proposal does not give them enough to do that, rewrite it.
A second card on what the finished document buys you.
