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Action Research and Reflective Practice Towards A Holistic View
Action Research and Reflective Practice Towards A Holistic View
To cite this article: Ruth Leitch & Christopher Day (2000) Action research and reflective
practice: towards a holistic view, Educational Action Research, 8:1, 179-193, DOI:
10.1080/09650790000200108
RUTH LEITCH
Queen’s University of Belfast, United Kingdom
CHRISTOPHER DAY
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT Two concepts that have captured the imagination of the educational
community in the last 60 years have been those of ‘reflective practice’ and
‘action research’. Both, in their various forms, are considered to be critical
dimensions of the professional development of teachers. However, whilst both
were receiving academic attention during the 1930s and 1940s (Lewin, 1934,
cited in Adelman, 1993; Lewin, 1946; Dewey, 1933), it was not until
Stenhouse’s (1975) notion of the teacher-as-researcher that the two came most
compellingly into relationship and educational action research as a process,
which held at its centre different kinds of reflection, began to be reformulated in
Britain (Carr, 1993). This article considers the important part played in
teachers’ development by different kinds of action research. Its central thesis is
that, although action research has a critical role to play not least as a means of
building the capacity of teachers as researchers of their own practice, there has
been insufficient attention given to both the nature of reflection in the action
research process, and its relationship to the purposes, processes and
outcomes. The article challenges the rational, cognitive models of reflection that
are implicit in much of the action research literature. It suggests that more
attention needs to be given to the importance of the role of emotion in
understanding and developing the capacities for reflection which facilitates
personal, professional and ultimately system change.
... the way of teaching demands a long journey that does not have
any easily identifiable destination ... It is a journey that I believe
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must include a backward step into the self and it is a journey that
is its own destination. (Tremmel, 1993, p. 456)
In any analysis, it is initially important to differentiate the terms ‘reflection’
and ‘reflective practice’. Reflection is considered as a process or activity that
is central to developing practices (Dewey 1933, 1938; Loughran, 1996).
However, although it retains connotations of thinking processes and
contemplative self-examination, in this context it seems to remain more a
metaphor for representing a process of learning from experience than a term
which might be subject to more detailed analysis. In the literature, for
example, reflection is predominantly associated with acts of cognition that
are linked to learning ‘how’ rather than learning ‘about’ or ‘what’. Dewey
(1933, p. 12) defined reflective thinking as a number of phases in thinking,
i.e. a state of doubt, hesitation or mental difficulty in which thinking
originates, followed by an act of searching or inquiring to find material that
will resolve the doubt. In 1996, Loughran, drawing on the work of Dewey
(1933) and Goodman (1984), defined reflection as ‘the deliberate and
purposeful act of thinking which centres on ways of responding to problem
situations’ (p. 14). Thus, reflection is associated with thinking and is judged
to involve the cognitive processes of both ‘problem finding’ and ‘problem-
solving’, concepts which continue to fascinate in cognitive psychology (Arlin,
1990; Csikszentmihalyi & Sawyers, 1995).
It was Schön, in the mid-1980s, who distinctively popularised the
image of the ‘reflective practitioner’ by extending Dewey’s (1933)
foundational ideas on reflection through observing how practitioners think
in action. This led to Schön (1983) coining reflection-on-action and
reflection-in-action as the two forms of reflective thinking. His model of the
‘epistemology of practice’ (p. 49) was timely and well received within teacher
education and research. According to Schön (1983) reflection-in-action
acknowledges the tacit processes of thinking which accompany doing, and
which constantly interact with and modify ongoing practice in such a way
that learning takes place. Much of this may remain unconscious, tacit and
unverbalised (Clark & Yinger, 1977), though Loughran (1996) suggests that,
in meeting unanticipated problem situations, reflection-in-action comprises
reframing the problem and improvising on the spot so that the experience
will be viewed differently. Reflection-on-action, on the other hand, is viewed
as teachers’ thoughtful consideration and retrospective analysis of their
performance in order to gain knowledge from experience. Russell & Munby
(1992) describe it succinctly as the ‘systematic and deliberate thinking back
over one’s actions’ (p. 3). These two processes together, in Schön’s terms,
form the core professional artistry of the reflective practitioner. Subsequent
research has been focused on determining that reflective practice exists,
and identifying enabling and disenabling conditions which affect its use,
and the means by which it might be fostered within all levels of the teaching
profession.
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(and here the link with action research becomes sharper), reflective practice
is considered to be central to the growth of teachers as inquirers who
engage in collaborative research with others from inside and outside the
school in generating knowledge of practice rather than finding themselves
as objects whose role is to implement existing theory in practice (Peters,
1985). However, research continues to reveal that there is a continuum of
reflective practice that exists within the profession (Ebbutt, 1989; Day,
1999). Teachers may reflect in differing ways at different times. It is
important, therefore, to recognise the impact of teachers’ positions in their
career and life cycle, and the effects of the organisational and cultural
contexts in which they work if opportunities for their professional growth to
be maximised (Day, 1993).
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action research. In the first approach, Carr & Kemmis (1986) view it as a
collective, collaborative activity engaged in by a self-critical community of
practitioners, who are committed to transforming the educational system in
line with rational and democratic principles by researching their own
practice. In this case, reflection takes on a social-reconstructionist mantle,
as practitioners confront, in their own and other’s practice, the oppression
inherent in dominant, socially and historically embedded ideologies. The
structure for the facilitation of this radical approach to reflective practice
remains mostly confined within the seemingly tidy model of planning, acting,
observing, reflecting and critiquing the broad social, political and economic
contexts of teaching and learning.
The second approach is typified by the work of Whitehead (1989, 1993)
and supported in the writings of Lomax (1986, 1994), McNiff (1992, 1995)
and Dadds (1995). Whitehead (1989, 1993, 1996) has developed a
commonsense concept of ‘living educational theory’ in which each of us is a
‘living contradiction of ourselves’. This is not unlike Argyris & Schön’s
(1976) ‘theory of action’ differing principally in its emphasis upon values.
Whilst we may hold certain values dear, these are often negated or denied in
practice. From this position, two fundamental questions arise: ‘How do I
improve my practice?’ and ‘How do I live my values more fully?’ These
necessitate engaging in a process of ‘explaining your present practice in
terms of an evaluation of your past’ (Whitehead, 1996, p. 2) with a view to
individuals creating improvements in their present and future contexts. The
action inquiry is carried out through a variety of means including,
autobiography, dialogical conversations, fictional stories (Evans, 1994),
reflective writing and journals (Holly, 1989). The researchers become aware
of the values that drive their work so that they may be clear about what
they are doing and why. Through such processes, teachers as researchers
construct their own ‘living educational theory’. Their claim to knowledge
may then be validated by groups of critical peers and thus eventually
contribute to the dynamic pool of living theory, which has the potential for
generalisation (Whitehead, 1989, p. 73). Whitehead’s approach is
emancipatory, but its initial emphasis is on introspective processes and
individual, rather than collective social action. However, both models have
similar goals and aim to challenge ‘deep structures’ (Holly, 1987). The
difference remains in their respective starting points – within one, the
system, within the other, the individual.
In summary, then, across the typology of action research approaches
outlined by Grundy, it is possible to observe not only the key role that
different forms of reflection play but also the ways in which different goals
influence the development of specific reflective processes in the
participant(s).
Specific tools for reflection are increasingly being incorporated into
action research methodologies from other disciplines and contexts. These
are justified as aids to reflective processing and meta-cognition, as well as a
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Correspondence
Ruth Leitch, Graduate School of Education, Queen’s University of Belfast,
69/71 University Street, Belfast BT7 1HL, United Kingdom
(r.leitch@qub.ac.uk).
Notes
[1] Schön (1983) drew a distinction between the notions of technical rationality
and the knowledge of practice. Therefore, reflection was seen as an important
vehicle for the development of professional knowledge etc.
[2] A similar tripartite distinction is made in the works of Van Manen (1977) and
Zeichner & Gore (1995).
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