ABSTRACT
But in spite of the ubiquity of this form of research instrument, their use has not been well recognised in professional development and educational research. And until recently there has been little in the literature on journal writing in education, and even less on critical incidents. In contrast, other forms of record keeping are well covered in the methodological literature. Yet, because critical incidents in teaching include a descriptive record, response and analysis upon which important judgements are made, they need to be constructed differently from merely anecdotal records. Also there probably need to be different kinds of critical incident appropriate to different fi elds of inquiry. Yet maybe there was more concern with the form in the past; C. Wright Mills, the great American sociologist, for instance, was a strong advocate of personal refl ective records, which he called a ‘research fi le’ (1959) because it was organised thematically rather than chronologically.
