Researching Your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing - Softcover

Mason, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415248620 ISBN 13: 9780415248624

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

Central to caring professions such as teaching is the need to notice and be sensitive to the experiences of pupils and teachers. Starting from this position, Researching Your Own Practice demonstrates that in order to develop your professional practice you must first develop your own sensitivities and awareness. One must be attuned to fresh possibilities when they are needed and be alert to such a need through awareness of what is happening at any given time.
By giving a full explanation of this theory and a guide to its implementation, this book provides a practical approach to becoming more methodical and systematic in professional development. It also gives the reader a basis for turning professional development into practitioner research, as well as giving advice on how noticing can be used to improve any research, or be used as a research paradigm in its own right.
The discipline of noticing is a groundbreaking approach to professional development and research, based upon noticing a possibility for the future, noticing a possibility in the present moment and reflecting back on what has been noticed before in order to prepare for the future. John Mason, one of the discipline's most authoritative exponents, provides us here with a clear, persuasive and practical guide to its understanding and implementation.

About this title

Review

'The book is well worth reading. I jumped at the chance to review it, because ... anything by John Mason is worth digging into ... Mason has a way of getting under my skin, of provoking me to think about issues I might otherwise let slide by.' - Alan Schoenfeld

'A welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on educational research. The evocative imagery and dual emphases on theory and practice should appeal to many of those researching their own practice or those of others.' - British Educational Research Journal

Synopsis

This text offers practical ways in which teachers can move from concern about their pupils and what they are learning, concern about their teaching, or even concern about other practices such as managing, to doing something about it in a practical and disciplined manner. At the heart of all enquiry lies "noticing": noticing an opportunity to act, noticing something that might be a possibility to try out, and noticing oneself in the midst of professional acts, whether teaching, researching, attending meetings, administering, or supporting colleagues. Noticing can be developed into a disciplined form of enquiry, which can turn into research. The art of noticing is what teachers need to develop if they are to improve their practice and undertake successful research in their classrooms.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0415248620
• ISBN 13: 9780415248624
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288