Abstract:
As a proponent of action research for more than 20 years, I reflect on my scholarship of higher
education using an auto-ethnographic lens. The research reported focuses mainly on my
facilitating of learning as a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, one of the largest residential
universities in South Africa. Through informal educational professional development I am
involved in offering workshops to academic staff and become involved in complementing
research projects. I am the coordinator of the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education
(PGCHE), a mainstream educational professional development programme offered at the
Faculty of Education. The objectives of the study are to make public my reflecting on my
reflection, which forms part of my action research. I do this with a view to encouraging
practitioners of action research to do the same. An action research spiral is executed,
complemented by cycles of reflection. Quantitative and qualitative data are collected. In this
article the focus is on qualitative data. It comes in the form of narratives and visuals. The
visuals include brain profiling. Narratives are derived from student feedback. The underpinning
epistemology is constructivism. By means of the action research teaching practice is enriched.
A higher order of reflection is promoted – identified as scholarly meta-reflection. All scholars
of higher education and action research should take a meta-level approach to reflecting on
practice: within an action research paradigm – reflecting on reflection at a high level of
scholarship.
