‘Seeing the trees not just the wood’: steps and not just journeys in teacher action research

Abstract

Employing a number of data-gathering tools (reflective journals, unit diaries, post-cycle reflective analyses, student interviews and observations) this paper 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. It suggests 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 paper concludes by suggesting that, in seeking to understand a teacher’s pedagogical and curricular change process, we need to intersperse research that focuses on the journey towards change with research that explores the individual processes of change.