A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

What happens? | 
80
8.5 Reflecting on your own development 
– the major finding?
‘Reflect’: v. ‘To think carefully and deeply about 
something’
1
Nobody would disagree that teachers should ‘think carefully 
and deeply’ about their work. Unfortunately, we are 
sometimes too busy to do this, and we replace reflecting 
with ‘assuming’. If we go back to the story of Teresa Perčić, 
whom we met in Chapter One, you will remember that she 
assumed that playing classical music had no effect on how 
well students concentrated during tasks, so she stopped 
doing it, despite the recommendation of her boss. It was 
only through the process of teacher-research that she 
learnt that her students did find it beneficial: 
So what was her final thought?:
 
Task 8.7 
Look carefully again at these final reflections. Think about 
the following two questions and either make notes or 
discuss with a colleague:
1. What did Teresa learn from her research that
is likely to help her in the future?
2. What do you think she will do next time she’s told
to do something by her boss because it has been 
proven by research?
Commentary
Teresa’s final reflections seem to indicate that she learnt 
several important things:
■
■
We can all be wrong, but we shouldn’t be scared of this.
It is an opportunity for learning;
■
■
We should avoid making assumptions based solely on 
‘signs’ of student behaviour (remember, in Chapter One 
we made this distinction between ‘signs’ and ‘evidence’);
■
■
It’s OK to be critical of recommendations we receive 
from others, and testing them out in our own classrooms 
is the perfect way to find out whether we should accept 
them or not.