ACTION RESEARCH

The meaning of ideas is not fixed by definitions; debates about the nature
or meaning of action research or critical participatory action research will
not be ended by the definition proposed here. A longstanding definition of
action research, which has the advantage of brevity, is this:
“Action research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by
participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and
justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as
their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these
practices are carried out” p.1
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The action research planner (3rd ed.). Geelong:
Deakin University Press.

Critical participatory action research aims to create spaces in which participants can explore the
(profoundly intertwined) cultural-discursive, social-political, material-economic and personal
origins and dimensions of problems in order to make possible the reconstruction of the collective
and individual practices implicated in producing such problems (Kemmis 2005)

Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (2005). Participatory action research: Communicative action and the
public sphere. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed.).
Thousand Oaks: Sage.

themes and issues that arise as common concerns as a consequence of the tensions and
interconnections within and between their shared lifeworlds (that provide content and resources
constituted in the shared logos of language and shared background assumptions in the cultural
dimension, solidarities in the social dimension, and competences and capacities in the personal
dimension), on the one hand, and, on the other, the administrative and economic systems that
structure and constrain possibilities for their action in the situation ; and by intervening in their
unfolding collective history through exploratory action to investigate their shared reality in order
to transform it and to transform their reality in order to investigate it
9 See Fals Borda (1979). 10 Critical participatory action research advocates exploratory interventions, that is, making
changes during the course of individual and collective practice in order to improve it, as opposed to only passively
intervening in practice after problems have arisen (Dewey 1916; Kemmis and Brennan Kemmis 2003). It aims to take
communicative action into social practice, using social practice and practical and critical reflections on the consequences
of practice as a source of new understandings and future reflection (Habermas 1987a; Kemmis and McTaggart 2005).
Critical participatory action researchers make critical analyses of practice/praxis using a range of perspectives in order to
create shared understandings of and orientations to social reality, with the intention of transforming social realities (Fals
Borda 1979; Kemmis and McTaggart 2000, 2005) so that they may become less irrational, less unjust and less inhumane.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan

NARRATIVE

What I’m excited about is the relationship between narrative and identity, particularly teacher
identity

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
reflect a reality that was sometimes painful for me to experience. I hope, through the words of this book, I have
been able to convey some of the insights, struggles, and courage of these people I have been lucky enough to
know.

EDUCATION

What should we do ?

 we might simply increase their knowledge of the world, but this would not necessarily
make them wish to use this knowledge honestly; we might seek to strengthen character
and purpose, but to what end if this people have nothing to eat or to wear? A system of
education is not one thing, nor does it have a single definite object, nor is it a mere matter
of schools. Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school
house walls, which molds and develops men.

But I have already said that human education is not simply a matter of schools; it is much
more a matter of family and group life – the training of one’s home, of one’s daily
companions, of one’s social class.
the importance of building and reinforcing community building and development. Working
from within.

TEACHERS EDUCATION
 It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought,
that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether
they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American
PRIVILEDGE

Du Bois knew, of course, that any black person at that time had to
struggle to tear down barriers just to lift oneself and one’s family.
But that was not enough: Successful black people, he said, must
recognize that their place in life was merely a matter of
opportunity. “If such opportunity were extended and broadened, a
thousand times as many Negroes could join the ranks of the
educated and able, instead of sinking into poverty, disease, and
crime.”
BILINGUAL EDUCATION
Admirable as were some of the ideas underlying this scheme, the whole thing simply
would not work in practice; it was found that if you were to use time and material to teach
trades thoroughly, you could not at the same time keep the industries on a commercial
basis and make them pay. Many schools started out to do this on a large scale and went
into virtual bankruptcy. Moreover, it was found also that it was possible to teach a boy a
trade mechanically, without giving him the full educative benefit of the process, and, vice
versa, that there was a distinctive educative value in teaching a boy to use his hands and
eyes in carrying out certain physical processes, even though he did not actually learn a
trade. It has happened, therefore, in the last decade, that a noticeable change has come
over the industrial schools. In the first place the idea of commercially remunerative industry
in a school is being pushed rapidly to the background. There are still schools with shops
and farms that bring an income, and schools that use student labor partially for the
erection of their buildings and the furnishing of equipment. It is coming to be seen,
however, in the education of the Negro, as clearly as it has been seen in the education of
the youths the world over, that it is the boy and not the material product, that is the true
object of education. Consequently the object of the industrial school came to be the
thorough training of boys regardless of the cost of the training, so long as it was thoroughly
well done.

focus on how
critical pedagogy in the
classroom may address issues of
power and
inequality both within and
outside the educational context,
and how
potential for change and
resistance may be developed.
THOUGHTS

Whenever I think about academy, the first thing that comes into my mind is reflection. Since I
started studying my bachelor degrees, the common thing in all my courses was the need for
reflection. Social sciences give you an idea of how to look at things from different perspectives and
the importance of realizing the position from where you are looking at the facts. Nevertheless, it
was only when I started writing this thesis and working on the research that I became conscious of
the different lenses of reflection I used and had. During the whole project I was constantly
changing perspectives, sometimes I had student’s eyes and I was trying to understand facts from
theory, after the sessions and the discussions I had with other participants my colleagues’
perceptions shaped the way I was looking at it, theory was always present in relationship with the
data I was collecting, and the main one in my opinion was my lenses from personal experience and
self-consciousness.

Anyone who wants to deeply understand the impact each action has in terms of the way we teach,
what we teach and how we do it, needs to be conscious about the assumptions they hold about
what constitutes justifiable actions, assumptions and perceptions and if they are accurate and
valid and for whom and how. It is a constant critical reflection that push us, teachers, to try new
things every day, go beyond expectations in terms of simple results, question the way we think
and how we do it like that and, last but not less important, reflect on the act of being a teacher
and what it implies and means. For instance, and without any doubt, I’ve come to a deeper
appreciation of the importance of reflecting and analyzing what we do as teachers constantly.
Listening, observing and discussing after each session was a crucial aspect that allowed me to
understand the complexity of teaching.
And, I’m more aware of the presence of socio-economical dynamics and have completely revised
the assumption that I was part of the normal people in Bogota.

I was not mistaken in the way I thought about critical reflection and the many different
perspectives a teaching project can bring into discussion when trying to systematize the
experience.

“Critically reflective teaching happens when we identify and scrutinize the assumptions that shape
our practice. The way we become aware of these is by seeing our actions through four
complementary lenses.”[CITATION Bro17 \p 10 \l 9226 ]

A self-study of my work as a practitioner-research facilitator and participant demands that I

acknowledge how each self influences and informs the other. In making explicit the interaction

between my professional and personal selves, it is my desire that I uncover, in some small way,

the formation of a teacher educator who, towards the end of an academic career, is continuing to

reflect on matters of identity and practice.

I want to believe that every good teacher wants to change the world for the better. At least, this is
my aim every time I stand in front of a person, a group or even I start dealing with my own
thoughts. Knowledge, teaching and learning are exactly that; an opportunity to make a change and
hopefully a good one.

DIALOGUE/ CONVERSATIONS

For all of us, conversation is the point: it is in practical and critical conversations that we meet one
another, share ideas, reach agreements and understandings, and decide what to do. In the case of
critical deliberations, it is also to decide how to act not just in our own interests but in the
interests of humankind. In a career of practical and critical deliberations

The ordinary world

The neighborhood and the own dynamics. The culture of the poor. Addressing poverty,
place matters.

I encountered and explored a new world that was both inviting and vastly interesting.

Awareness of my own social identity. Commuting as the mirror I needed to face in terms of
understanding the invisible but tangible division between north and south.

Self awareness

“People shape their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they interpret
their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a portal through which a
person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made
personally meaningful. Narrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first
foremost a way of thinking about experience. Narrative inquiry as a methodology entails a
view of the phenomenon. To use narrative inquiry methodology is to adopt a particular
view of experience as phenomenon under study.”(Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 375).

Barkhuizen (2008, p.2) comments that “The notion that storytelling is a ‘natural’ way of
making sense of our lives is, therefore, central to its use as a tool for reflective thinking in
teacher development.”

Bibliografía
Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (segunda ed.). San Francisco ,
California: Jossey-Bass a Wiley Brand .