Researching our own practice

Abstract

This theoretical paper argues the value of the teacher undertaking research to deal with the problems of his/her own professional practice. It sustains the claim that research is a fundamental strategy of knowledge production and can be undertaken by professionals to better understand the problems that they face and find ways to deal with them. It discusses the characteristics of research about practice and associates this concept with related ones such as teacher researcher, action-research, reflection, and academic research. It indicates the main moments of this kind of research and underlines the fundamental importance of assuming an inquiry attitude. It also reviews the most common critiques regarding investigating our own practice, made by scholars of different fields, and discusses several possible quality criteria of this kind of research. Finally, it discusses the paradigmatic affiliation of investigating our own practice and points the scope of this perspective in mathematics education, in Portugal and elsewhere. Thus, the paper contains an agenda of theoretical work to legitimize this kind of research, besides suggesting the need to reflect on the experiences that are being carried out in the educational field.