In the initial action phase, I understood the intervention primarily as a test of a non-evaluative peer feedback practice. The working assumption was that enabling colleagues to author their own feedback questions would increase agency in the feedback exchange and foster positive and psychologically safe engagement. From a design-oriented perspective, I hypothesised that a feedback toolkit might be a useful artefact to scaffold future peer feedback processes, helping participants reflect strategically on their feedback questions and feel comfortable providing constructive responses.
My intention was to provide a prototype toolkit based on theory to participants from the outset in order to test this hypothesis. However, I found it difficult to translate theory into a practical and novel feedback toolkit, and action stalled as I treated the absence of a toolkit as a barrier to engaging participants. In a revelatory reflective journaling moment, I realised that the toolkit was not a methodological necessity. While this hypothesis-driven, design-oriented approach initially provided a familiar way into the project, it also narrowed my understanding of what to prioritise at that stage. In hindsight, the toolkit functioned less as a required output and more as a conceptual anchor that rooted me in familiar design research processes at the outset that was an impediment. This shift in understanding aligns with Alvesson’s account of reflexivity as operating through “a framework that stimulates an interplay between producing interpretations and challenging them” (Alvesson, 2003). Letting go of this assumption enabled the project to move forward.
I initiated feedback exchanges by circulating my own questions to colleagues (below) [1], alongside repeated invitations at team meetings. Although these invitations were received positively in conversation, participation remained limited. This lack of uptake became analytically significant; I treated non-participation as part of qualitative data, possible signaling latent conditions shaping collegial engagement. Perhaps workload pressures, relational tensions or negative associations with feedback were factors. Action research traditions treat resistance, hesitation and silence as meaningful expressions of context rather than deficits to be corrected (Reason & Bradbury, 2008).
The decisive moment in reframing the enquiry occurred during interviews (see semi-structured interview script below) with participants who were already in active collegial partnerships. These participants described the feedback activity as valuable because it was embedded in collaborative relationships characterised by trust, shared interest and mutual support [2][3]. Their accounts challenged my earlier assumption that generalised peer feedback – if sufficiently well designed – would be a meaningful step forward regardless of relational context. As Alvesson (2012) suggests, interviewees may “carve out a space of their own”, resisting the interviewer’s intentions and interpretive frames. In this case, that resistance acted against my own inertia, prompting a shift in how I understood the work: collegial feedback was not simply a practice to be introduced, but something relationally embedded, most effective when anchored in specific collaborations rather than abstract or performative collegiality.
By settling into this reflexive approach, meaning from the data was not something extracted, but as something synthesised through multiplicities of interaction, positionality and interpretive judgement. This understanding resonates with Deleuze’s emphasis on becoming rather than fixed representation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Consistent with McNiff’s (2002) conception of action research as relational and participatory, the action phase did not validate a specific feedback mechanism, but led to a reframing of the enquiry itself to: What are the conditions for positive and sustainable collegial feedback?
Footnotes
[1] See Appendix for colleague feedback responses to my feedback questions
[2] See Appendix for Participant written reflections on their collegial feedback exchanges. It also contains their feedback questions. On their own accord, they wrote reflections prior to their semi-structured interview.
[3] See Appendix for redacted coding document I developed from the interview transcripts.
Bibliography
Alvesson, M. (2003) ‘Beyond neopositivists, romantics, and localists: A reflexive approach to interviews in organizational research’, Academy of Management Review, 28(1), pp. 13–33.
Alvesson, M. (2012) ‘Views on interviews: A sceptical review’, Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, 7(2), pp. 127–144.
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
McNiff, J. (2002) Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers. Bournemouth: Hyde Publications.
Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (eds.) (2008) The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. 2nd edn. London: SAGE.