Ow Action Research Encourages and Facilitates Teacher’s Reflective Practice.
Discuss how action research encourages and facilitates teacher’s reflective practice.
Two concepts that have caused much debate within education in the last 50 years have been those of reflective practice and action research. Both are considered critical to the professional development of teachers. The following essay will discuss how action research encourages and facilitates a teacher’s reflective practice. It will begin by discussing the concepts of action research and reflective practice, outlining some of the theories behind the principles and how they relate to teaching practice. Drawing on research of others, the essay will explore the positives and negatives of action research, and its effects on the practitioner’s professional reflective development
Theorist, Kurt Lewin (1946) is credited with the term ‘action research’ after it first emerged in his research paper ‘action research and minority problems’ in the 1940s. Since this time it has been adopted as a research methodology by those wishing to investigate and improve professional practice within their field. Carr and Kemmis (1986) provide a classic definition of action research: ‘Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out’ (Carr and Kemmis,1986:162). Action research is regarded as a research-and-development approach and its aim is to bring about change or improvement to a situation. It is achieved through a process of investigation, action and reflection, while at the same time recording the information in a way that may be useful to the project in hand, and potentially to outsiders. Action research is a cyclical process and the critical point regarding the cycle, is to ensure that the research feeds directly back into practice and that the process is
Two concepts that have caused much debate within education in the last 50 years have been those of reflective practice and action research. Both are considered critical to the professional development of teachers. The following essay will discuss how action research encourages and facilitates a teacher’s reflective practice. It will begin by discussing the concepts of action research and reflective practice, outlining some of the theories behind the principles and how they relate to teaching practice. Drawing on research of others, the essay will explore the positives and negatives of action research, and its effects on the practitioner’s professional reflective development
Theorist, Kurt Lewin (1946) is credited with the term ‘action research’ after it first emerged in his research paper ‘action research and minority problems’ in the 1940s. Since this time it has been adopted as a research methodology by those wishing to investigate and improve professional practice within their field. Carr and Kemmis (1986) provide a classic definition of action research: ‘Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out’ (Carr and Kemmis,1986:162). Action research is regarded as a research-and-development approach and its aim is to bring about change or improvement to a situation. It is achieved through a process of investigation, action and reflection, while at the same time recording the information in a way that may be useful to the project in hand, and potentially to outsiders. Action research is a cyclical process and the critical point regarding the cycle, is to ensure that the research feeds directly back into practice and that the process is
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