Abstract:

The paper deals with the topic of action research as an effective tool for self-reflection of the teacher and the development of his/her competencies. The aim of the paper is to define action research as a specific tool usable in the reality of pedagogical practice, to analyze the possibilities of its application by primary and secondary school teachers and to present appropriate methods of action research based on reflection of own activities by experienced teachers (proven techniques and data collection tools).
We present an action research project as a method of creating a professional portfolio by a teacher (the respondents were 5 teachers of primary and secondary schools in the Czech Republic with more than 3 years of teaching practice), we define, what materials can be part of this portfolio. In the article we abundantly apply the experience gained during the project Community Support for Practice as a tool for developing key competencies (supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic), in which solution took part in primary and secondary school teachers, follow-up master teachers, field and general didactics and other professionals from the faculties preparing students for the teaching profession (especially a special pedagogue, psychologist, general pedagogy, pedagogy diagnostics, action research). The tool of data collection (in single case study research design) is analysis of portfolio, phenomenological analysis of products of teachers, contextual analysis. In the next step, the data will be rewritten to protocol as "real-world context" and analysed by coding (open, axial, selective). The result will be presented as case study of action research in focus of the Mental Line Model of "grow up" of teachers identity and self-development of didactics competences.

Keywords:

action research, primary and secondary school teachers, a professional portfolio, self-reflection of the teacher, development of competences