Recurrence Quantification Analysis as a Methodological Innovation for School Improvement Research

Abstract

School improvement and educational change can be facilitated by learning through reflection, as this allows teachers to discover ways to develop and adapt to change. Higher levels of engagement in reflection have been found to be beneficial, but it is unclear from which everyday routine in engagement in reflection higher levels arise, and thus whether occasions to make knowledge explicit should be organized with a certain constancy. In this study, we therefore used a conceptualization of teacher learning through reflection as a situated and dynamic process in which available environmental information, learning activities, and professional practices are interconnected, and co-develop. Seventeen Dutch Vocational Education and Training teachers participated over a period of 5 months. We explored the use of daily and monthly logs as measurement instruments and Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) as the analysis technique applied to the time-series generated from the daily logs. The findings indicated that teachers who make information from their working environment explicit more are also able to make new insights explicit more. The routine with which teachers make information explicit was found to be mostly unrelated to making new insights explicit. To reach their levels of engagement in reflection, some teachers organized opportunities to reflect with determined intervals, others seemed to recognize those opportunities as the working environment provided them, and some used a combination thereof. Moreover, the use of daily and monthly logs seemed to fit better to some participants than others. Only sometimes does organizing constancy in engagement in reflection seem to relate to the levels thereof. This study provides an example of how logs and RQA can be adopted to tap into professional learning as a dynamic and situated process in support of school improvement and educational change.