‘Seeing the Trees not just the Wood’: Steps and not just Journeys in Teacher Action Research

Published: 
May. 01, 2013

Source: Educational Action Research, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2013, pages 147-163

This article examines the significant impact of using action research in a second cycle of learning in the same context and with the same participants.
Particularly, the article examines the residual and emergent effects of cooperative learning on the participants in a second, sequential unit of track and field athletics taught a year after the first intervention.
Data were collected through several tools: reflective journals, unit diaries, post-cycle reflective analyses, student interviews and observations.

The results suggest that learning was both academic and social, and that participants felt the unit built on their prior learning about track and field because it was progressive, motivational and student-centred.
The article concludes that, in seeking to understand a teacher’s pedagogical and curricular change process, we need to intersperse research that focuses on the journey toward change with research that explores the individual processes of change.

Updated: Nov. 23, 2015
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