In this assignment, you will submit your working Introduction and Literature Review for your Action Research Proposal.  You should include the following:

Introduction: This is where you will introduce your topic in a general sense and within the context of education. Why are you examining this? What is important to find out? Frame your ‘problem’ within the context of education and use research to back it up (I do not want personal anecdotes here). 

For example: If I was studying the impact of an emotional-intelligence curriculum on young children living in poverty, I would introduce my proposal by discussing the prevalence of young children in poverty (using real statistics that are cited) and the impact poverty has on a child’s education (also using cited research). Then I would discuss the importance of social-emotional learning at a young age and the positive impact it has on educational trajectory (using research). I might also bring in a short discussion of how students living in poverty might benefit immensely from a curriculum focused on social-emotional learning to assist in their understanding of the emotions they are experiencing from hardship and self-regulation of these emotions in the future. The ‘problem’ is that young students living in poverty are already at risk of educational failure due to their environmental circumstances and also need extra assistance understanding the emotions they are feeling due to the hardships surrounding them. Hence, using an emotional-intelligence curriculum could improve not only educational outcomes but emotional development and life in general for these young children. 

Literature review:  In this section, you will discuss articles that are relevant and meaningful to your problem, your purpose, your research design, and your methods. I would like at least 3 articles selected and discussed in this working section. For each of the articles provide a general overview, the research design, data collection and analysis, and their findings. You will also need to explain why this is relevant to your proposal. This is how you find out what has already been done, what has been successful or effective, and what has been ineffective. You build your own methods and design from the success and failures of other researchers. 

For example: I would want to select articles that examine the impact on social-emotional learning curriculum and techniques on the educational outcomes and home outcomes for students at risk. I would want to find articles that are similar to my topic, the age range I am examining, using similar methods, and with a similar design.

Research Question

How can I use the MarcoPolo learning tool to increase student engagement in my VPK class at Kiddie Academy as measured by an increase in the number of students completing assignments and participating in class discussions?