Khin Chaw Su Su San shares reflective insights on Practice-based research in Myanmar ethnic regions.
There is growing recognition of reflexivity as a crucial aspect of qualitative research, emphasizing the need for researchers to actively acknowledge their biases, decisions, and assumptions that can influence the research process. This critical reflection is essential for ensuring the credibility, trustworthiness, and ethical conduct of research. In particular, when conducting research in vulnerable settings with heightened sensitivity, researchers must remain ethically engaged throughout the research process. In the conflict-affected educational landscape in Myanmar’s ethnic regions, where resources are scarce, security concerns are heightened, and technical support for teachers is limited, building self-critical reflection in practice-based research emerges as a valuable tool for researchers and practitioners, i.e., leaders and teachers.
This post is a critical account of my research experience, highlighting the value of critical reflection and its potential implications for educational settings. Rather than communicating my research outcomes, I aim to share insights on how critical reflection supported my research process, enhanced my research participants’ engagement, and provided potential implications for the broader field of educational leadership. I highlight the dual contribution of critical reflection: fostering growth within practice-based research and advancing leadership practices in education. This reflection can be beneficial for researchers planning to conduct research projects in conflict-affected regions.
Why Critical Reflection Matters: My Approach to Reflexivity in Practice-based Research
Research Context
February 1, 2021’s military coup has led to widespread disruptions, political unrest, and economic collapse. This ongoing crisis has brought on increased security concerns due to the brutal oppression, detentions, and airstrikes throughout the country. The coup and the subsequent political chaos it caused also significantly impacted the Myanmar education system. More than half of university instructors, school teachers, and students are at the forefront of the revolution, engaging in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) to show their refusal to join the military-backed education system. Consequently, academics and students have dispersed. Many have joined armed resistance movements or have been forced to flee their home cities.
The coup has also affected ethnic communities and ethnic education providers, threatening the sustainability of their educational services. For example, airstrikes have targeted ethnic national schools. In addition to these challenges, the increased number of displaced students has strained the capacity of ethnic national schools due to limited resources, financial constraints, and security concerns. These factors restrict their ability to accommodate their students and hinder these students’ access to education. This situation has only compounded the existing prolonged challenges that they had already encountered, creating a more challenging context and increasing the vulnerability of the population. These conditions highlighted the vulnerability and fragility of my research context, where critical reflection and practice-based inquiry are essential.
My research focuses on examining practices and insights from ethnic education organization leaders in supporting teachers’ professional development during crisis. The research employed a practice-based inquiry approach, utilizing case studies and conducting a series of semi-structured interviews. My research questions are tied to the concept of practice-based inquiry, allowing ethnic education leaders to identify their contextual challenges, to reflect on their best practices, and foresee the future possibilities and their recommended strategies for the stakeholders and policy makers. Conducting research in a home country amidst crisis presents unique challenges. Having worked in ethnic regions and shared the experience of oppression, I could connect with research participants and grasp the nuanced context. This placed me as an insider. At the same time, I had to remain conscious of the potential for projecting insider assumptions. Conversely, the safety of my host country creates a distinct divide between my reality and the context of my participants. This privilege gives me a sense of guilt and makes me feel like an outsider. This unique context of insider-outsider dynamics forced me to reflect on my own biases and practice reflexivity.
What is Critical Reflection?
Recognizing these challenges, I employed critical reflection as a tool to understand the role of knowledge creation within qualitative research. Scholars have used the concepts of critical reflection and reflexivity interchangeably. Both involve a process of self-evaluation on researchers’ positionality using different tools, for example journal writing, memos, and the researcher’s diary, alongside recognition of the researchers’ influence on the research process and outcomes. In practical terms, this means I adopted reflective writing to capture experiences throughout the research process, which Holly calls “Journal writing.” I documented critical incident that caused me to confront my own positionality and gain self-awareness in real time. This process helped me mitigate potential bias and prevented my own perspectives from interfering with the findings. It allowed me to track my thoughts, feelings, and experiences and forced me to remain grounded in the realities that my research participants experienced in crisis-affected regions. By reflecting on the fragile situation in their practice-base, which is influenced by unique historical, social, cultural, and political circumstances, I could better anticipate and navigate potential challenges. I remained mindful of the language I used, ensuring that it would not be misinterpreted or perceived as disrespectful to others’ cultural identities.
This process allows me to examine my position as a researcher while engaging deeply with the lived realities of practitioners in Myanmar’s ethnic regions.
What is Practice-based Inquiry (PBI)?
In this under-resourced and crisis-stricken context, where there is limited literature on how ethnic education leaders have been supporting teachers’ professional development during crises in Myanmar, a practice-based inquiry approach is needed to uncover insights from the lived experiences of practitioners. Practice-based inquiry (PBI) encompasses action planning, accumulating evidence, and interpreting the results. It is a collaborative and reflective way of setting problems and inquiring into potential solutions, rooted in the realities of practitioners and their communities. My research therefore employed a practice-based inquiry approach, allowing my research participants to identify problems, reflect on their own practices, and envision future potentials.
Reflection on Its Application: Power Dynamics, Bias, and Research Design
As a researcher conducting research in Myanmar’s ethnic regions during the current political crisis, I encountered unique challenges that demanded a reflective and adaptive approach. Through my research experience, I found critical reflection pivotal in navigating power dynamics between researcher and the participants, reducing potential bias, and shaping my research design. Adopting critical reflection not only enabled me to engage ethically in the research process but also ensured that the research outcomes represented the participants’ insights and lived realities.
Balancing Power Dynamics
In my research, I positioned myself as a researcher outside of their practice-base, and tried to ensure research participants’ insights were central to the research process. I also acknowledged the importance of practitioner research, as it offers unique, context-specific insights grounded in local realities. This approach was solidified through academic reflections on the importance of amplifying voices in my research. By revisiting these core principles, I moved toward a more collaborative way of knowledge co-creation. I created a collaborative space for meaningful contribution to the research, then co-analysis with the participants throughout the research. For instance, I shared interview questions to give them time to reflect, sent prepared data, and later invited their feedback in identifying key themes. This critical engagement throughout the research process allowed me to balance outsider explorations with the participants’ voices and expertise. It allowed research participants to actively share insights that directly influence research outcomes.
Managing Bias
My existing values, beliefs, experiences, and assumptions may introduce bias when developing themes and interpreting the findings. This challenge is further compounded by the shared experience of oppression among the researcher and research participants under the coup. While this created an emotional connection with the participants, it also challenged me as a researcher in data analysis and theme development. The significant challenge I faced is completely internal, it required me to engage in critical reflection. This challenge was to see if data collection, findings, and interpretations were aligned with the emerging realities, or were they unintentionally shaped by my own bias. For instance, during my first interview, I encountered unconscious bias during data collection. I noted down this event for reflection and to revisit later. By reflecting on these notes as a third person and evaluating my interactions in the first interview, I found that I unintentionally asked questions prompted by my own assumptions.
For example, I asked “how have these devastating disruptions impacted teacher participation in professional development programs?” By using the word “devastating” and ‘impacted’, I had intentionally framed the outcome for the participants and not allowed them to consider any other reality, rather being open to both positive and negative responses. Having learned from this event, I improved my questions, opening the door for both positive and negative influences. For instance, I asked, “In what ways has the current situation shaped teacher participation in professional development programs?” Over time, I minimized the unconscious bias in subsequent interviews, ensuring that their perspectives were valued and remained central to our exchange.
Guiding Research Design
By engaging in critical reflection, I aligned my research methods with the ground realities of my participants and provided room for flexibility based on ongoing reflection. In my research, I was initially aware that my questions heavily focused on delving into the challenging experiences in crisis situations. This risked increasing participants’ stress and anxiety. To challenge my own assumptions, I noted them down and revisited the course materials and academic literature. Through this reflection, I adopted the appreciative inquiry (AI) approach in designing interview questions to shift the lens from focusing on challenges and the problems-solving to identifying what works well within a system. Consequently, the interview questions were built on the research participants’ existing strengths and successes before moving on to the challenges and critical engagement in the future.
This methodological shift not only reduced participants’ stress but also emphasized their resilience, sense of accomplishment, and motivation. Designing the questionnaires in this way gave participants the space to reflect on their successful events in the past, current endeavors to overcome the challenges, and potential strategies to improve in the future. This series of reflections guided participants to recognize their own accomplishment and resilience despite the recurring crises, and it enabled them to envision future goals.This meant that participants analyzed their positions, assessed their leadership practices, and evaluated future-oriented perspectives. One participant acknowledged that this interview made him reflect on his devotion, leadership strategies, and gave him time to envision future strategies; he found it encouraging to move on amidst the crises. It is a profound experience to see this guided critical reflection equip participants with the tools to navigate this complexity, identify gaps, and foresee upcoming opportunities.
Implications for Educational Leadership
Through this research experience, I identified several valuable aspects of critical reflection in practice-based research within qualitative research and educational settings:
Challenges of Critical Reflection in Practice-Based Research
While critical reflection in practice-based research demonstrated its value in my research, it also raised concerns regarding time constraints and practical implications.
As a researcher, in an earlier stage of my research, I worried about whether the constant process of assessing and improving my approach would hinder the research timeline. Moreover, I was also concerned that allowing research participants to review and validate the collected data and findings could delay the process due to participants’ security and limitations on internet accessibility. A distinct example of this is when interviews were required to be postponed due airstrikes on their schools, which had a causal effect. However, by using different communication channels and relying on the strong commitment of the research participants, I overcame the challenge. One participant noted that despite the security concerns, it was crucial to “raise voices representing their ethnic regions on the international stage.” This taught me that in a crisis context, the commitment of research participants is vital. It is important to consider that the level of commitment may vary and lead to varying results. Participants in Myanmar are facing crisis-imposed challenges, and their commitment to their communities may be stronger compared with another stable context.
As a practitioner, I also recognize that establishing critical reflection within a practice base can be challenging, particularly in under-resourced and conflict-affected settings. The process of critical reflection challenges us to remain open, adaptable, and responsive to the recurring needs of communities. It is largely influenced by one’s social, cultural, and traditional practices, and depends on the exposure and capabilities of practitioners in engaging in critical reflection. Therefore, it demands time and support from educational leaders to foster a spirit of inquiry in teachers’ practice-base.
Conclusion: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice
Overall, my research experience highlighted the value of critical reflection in practice-based inquiry. The results serve as a tool for researchers to ethically engage, navigate methodological challenges, and improve their research practices. For practitioners in this research, critical reflection creates a space to voice their perspectives, reflect on their leadership strategies, and develop context-specific solutions.
The implications of this approach can extend to the field of educational leadership and management. By fostering a culture of inquiry through critical reflection within educational settings, educational leaders can transform schools into learning organizations. They can enable educators to contextualize research-based practices, improve their own approaches, and develop evidence-based work, which can further advocate for change. By researchers engaging in critical reflection in practice-based research, and practitioners embracing it in their educational settings, the gap between theory and practice can be narrowed, fostering meaningful and sustainable change in education.
Emphasizing the value of critical reflection also requires acknowledging the practical challenges of its applications. These challenges include time constraints, the level of commitment by research participants, and contextual sensitivity. In addition, when building the practice of critical reflection in one’s specific practice base, it is important to consider the influence of cultural and social barriers, the exposure and capability of practitioners, and the need for adaptability.
Ultimately, when we cultivate a culture of critical reflection in the education and research fields, we are not only improving the research practices; we are respecting the participants’ lived experiences and strengthening the participants’ abilities through collaborative inquiry.
Therefore, to shape a better future of learning and build a more resilient education system, it is essential to investigate how a culture of inquiry and a practice of critical reflection can be established in a traditional educational setting with crisis-imposed challenges. As researchers, we must engage in critical reflection of our lived reality and build a community where individuals across the educational entities can intellectually engage with one another, even during crisis.
Khin Chaw Su Su San is a master’s graduate from the University of Nottingham (UK) and a professional with expertise in teaching, educational leadership, and partnerships. Her research interests include teacher professional development in a vulnerable educational setting, crisis-affected education, international higher education partnership, and Practice-based Inquiry.
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