Nilson DaSilva#5 FNED 547 Fall 2015

Memo#5 The importance of mess in AR

It is easier to understand and get involved with action research (AR) when you get a sense of how experts in this methodology fell in their jumble process. As a methodic teacher, I like things in order so before read the article, I was unsure about the importance of mess in the inquiring researching, whose cycles look like a ‘lucky dip’ process. It seems my professional motivation goes higher when I plan and execute tasks in a sequence.  Now that I understand that the real learning for action researchers is in the "botanizing period', I recognize my feelings of untidiness, free flowing as characteristics of the ‘searching for meaning period’.  Currently, my mess is bumbling where I am constantly sorting and streaming ideas to find what constitutes my main inquiry as well as the important areas for investigation. All these attempts to find my watershed, are quite confused as they can be perceived as the familiar awaiting for the illumination of a punctum point. No doubt, I can be flexible enough to fit my own different ways of working in this sorting out things which in AR involves knowledge, experience, judgment and intuition to find the pivotal learning point.  According to Cook, this stage moves the interest from passive to active and intense. She also pointed out the difference between the focus point to the punctum point, where the focus point draws you in and holds you while the punctum point is the stage where I think I am in now. I will also call my stage in AR as a melting pot of thoughts, feelings, ideas and theories. In short, I feel comfortable with my mess understanding it as part of a teacher`s function while developing action research to admit inadequacies and changing process to develop spontaneous and creative transformational pedagogy practices.