Action‐in‐Reflection

ABSTRACT

The literature on practitioner research offers mixed messages about the need for an appropriate application of knowledge of research ‘methods’ in practitioner enquiry. This article takes a fresh look at the interpretive expertise of teaching and at the grounds for claiming this as a legitimate and sufficient resource for practitioner research. The analysis builds on, and then distances itself from, the work of Schon, to describe processes of classroom reflection in terms of five distinct interpretive moves. These, it is argued, are part of all teachers' interpretive repertoires. They are the means by which we probe the meaning of children's responses to our teaching and generate the understandings that inform subsequent action. When used together, in the context of practice or research, the interplay between them constitutes a procedure for generating new knowledge, understandings and hypotheses for action, which is as rigorous and self‐critical as the most exacting (traditional) research process.