Professionalisation through reflection as the foundation for organisational learning in schools

PAROLS as a laboratory for reflective practice research

Abstract

This article presents PAROLS (Professionalisation – Action Research – Organisational Learning – Schools) as a framework and method for reflective practice-based research, which does not (merely) implement school development but rather supports it through research and reconstructively reveals the transitions between the individual, collective and organisational levels. The starting point is that professional practice in a school context is characterised by uncertainty, ambiguity and organisational complexity, and requires systematic reflection (Schön, 1983). Reflection serves as a means of making professional experiences workable and rendering learning processes empirically accessible at all levels (Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1983). The 4I model serves here as a heuristic for tracing ‘feed-forward and feedback movements’ as well as transitions between ‘Intuiting/Attending’, ‘Interpreting’, ‘Integrating’ and (where realised) ‘Institutionalising’ (Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999; Zietsma, Winn, Branzei, & Vertinsky, 2002). The PAROLS-LAB (LAB for short) focuses its research interest on the question of how organisational learning can be studied in the field of higher education and how different theoretical and methodological approaches can be combined to empirically reconstruct these transitions. The LAB’s ‘dual learning movement’ is linked to the concept of ‘Deutero-learning’, with double-loop learning serving as a methodological starting point for reflecting on assumptions that guide action (Argyris & Schön, 1978, 1996). Observation and participation are systematically interwoven within a recursive framework based on action research. The results of the analysis feed back into consultancy and teaching and pave the way for new approaches to the field and research practices (Elliott, 1991; Altrichter, Posch, & Spann, 2018).