From process to practice: research,reflexivity and writing in adult education

The greater involvement by adult education practitioners in research poses the need to locate and problematise research as an activity. By seeing research as a social practice rather than a process it becomes possible to highlight the vital and neglected dimension of reflexivity. The paper argues that there is a need to recognise the place of writing in adult education research. Research can then be understood as a textual practice where it is impossible to ignore the workings of reflexivity and the need for researchers to be reflexive. The different forms reflexivity can take are considered in order to show that reflexivity does not refer exclusively to the effects of the researcher's psychological make‐up or personal values. It is argued that there is a need for adult education researchers to become critical writers and readers of research texts and a framework is outlined which makes it possible to highlight the workings of reflexivity as a movement away from the purely personal to an awareness of the operation of language, discourses and power/knowledge formations in the assumptive structures and unconscious values of research.