I am in the process of drafting my exegesis at the moment (in the quiet time that is the beginning of the year) The introduction is drafted and now I am moving onto summarising the research methods, which is useful as this will set up a clearer framework for reflecting on the projects. At the moment aspects of action research seem to be where things fit into place, looking back at the process retrospectively. I started with AM‘s summary on the Labsome wiki. This led to an excellent article titled ‘Understanding Action Research’. In this article there are a number of valuable points like:
The best question is the one that will lead you to look at your practice deeply and engage in cycles of continuous learning from your everyday practice of your craft. These questions come from a desire to have practice align with values and beliefs. Exploring these questions helps the researcher to be progressively more effective in reaching their personal goals and developing professional expertise.
Also, these notes for the reader in the introduction are useful:
The reader needs to be invited to think about the problem at the widest level. This should answer the question –Why should a read this, why should I care about this study? This is not about the context but about the problem and how it is linked to your visions for a different future.
In terms of evaluation and reflection there are these pointers:
EVALUATION: How will you/did you evaluate the outcomes of your action?…..(Indicate your plans for your analysis in a paragraph or two).
REFLECTION: Looking back on my action with the benefit of data, I now think… and if I were to do this again I would have…. The thing that worked best was… What most surprised me from the data was…
With a overarching reflection as part of extended and detailed overview:
FINAL REFLECTION: This is where the action research really takes stock of what was learned. It might be helpful to think of a reflection as a set of connections between the past, present and future. If this section is only a summary of what was happened, it will fail as a reflection. A reflection provides a deep understanding of why things happened as they did and how those outcomes help you address your overarching question. At the end of writing a good reflection, you will know more than you did when you started it. If you haven’t gained some new insights about the problem and your actions to solve it, it is likely that you are only summarizing what happened. Reflection is a powerful learning experience. It is an essential part of action research.
The point about knowing more than when you started is important!
Another part of this evaluation is revisiting notes on the UTS Creativity and Cognition website and the section on Practice Based Research (PBR) which have been updated since my last visit including the PBR bibliography which has action research links.
There is also some useful notes on reflection in varying places. In the Questions and Answers section notes from Ross Gibson:
Ross Gibson’s view is ‘the text is not an explanation of the artwork; rather, the text is an explicit, word-specific representation of processes that occur during the iterative art-making routine, processes of gradual, cyclical speculation, realisation or revelation leading to momentary, contingent degrees of understanding. To this extent the text that one produces is a kind of narrative about the flux of perception-cognition-intuition. The text accounts for the iterative process that carries on until the artist decrees that the artwork is complete and available for critique, ‘appreciation’, interpretation, description, evaluation. All these particular practices can entail other particular texts.’
I like the “narrative” angle here. In this FAQ a number of question are posed as part of the reflective process:
Good questions to ask yourself are
what was proposed, discussed, decided and carried through,
what stumbling blocks arose and how they were addressed….,
whether the ideas were workable, interesting, challenging….
whether the collaboration worked well or not
reasons for success or otherwise,did the solutions work well, if not why not?
whether there were different viewpoints between you and your collaborating parties
whether lessons were learnt from failures.