Learning from our struggles as formative intervention researchers through critical incidents: A self-study of two teacher educators

Ongoing quality critical reflection is required for qualitative educational researchers to attend to their own reflexivity. This self-study is an examination of two formative intervention researchers who are both teacher-educators conducting Change Laboratory (CL) work in the United States (first author) and formative intervention in Brazil (second author). The first author adapted and employed the CL methodological framework as a professional learning course lab to work with preservice teachers. The second author explored formative intervention practices with in-service teachers. Both formative interventions were intended to support the participants' teacher development as they engaged in their practices. Using analytical narrative vignettes generated from the critical incidents, the authors identified three pairs of individual-collective dialectical tensions, as understood in cultural-historical activity theory: the planning nature of volitionality and vulnerability, the implementation stage of fear and hope, and the reflective stance of the puzzled and the patched. Finally, the implications of using self-study in formative intervention methods were addressed. To conclude, externalizing dialectical tensions in critical incidents is a psychological task that formative intervention researchers can undertake to increase reflexivity.