Meeting the new demands of creative and active learning environments (OECD, 2009), teachers should be involved in continuous professional learning such as updating their knowledge and skills, reflecting and collaborating with colleagues (Timperley, Wilson, Barrar & Fung, 2017). Teachers being in a continuous professional learning process; teachers exploring own beliefs underlying their actions and their reflections on action, is connected to effective teaching and successful student learning (Calderhead, 1996; Kagan, 1992).

This paper offers new insight into how methodical triangulation can contribute to facilitate, explore and identify teachers’ beliefs about learning and teaching and their reflections on action, and may be valuable for teacher education programmes, especially those concerning teachers’ continuing and further education.

Exploring teachers’ beliefs and their reflections is challenging, as they exist in the teacher’s mind and are often tacit or difficult to articulate, and are significant elements in teachers’ professional competence (Argyris & Schön, 1974; Fives & Gill, 2015).

Beliefs overlap with other constructs, such as conceptions, meanings and values (Fives &Buehl, 2012), and are held as strong predictors of an individual’s decisions and actions (Fives et al., 2015). Reflection is understood here as ‘an active, mental process of trying to structure and restructure an experience, a problem or existing knowledge or insights’ (Korthagen, 2001, p. 58). This view is based on the assumption that inquiry and critical thinking, formed as a hermeneutic process (Gadamer, 2012), lead to new knowledge, which can ultimately change one’s actions (Dewey, 2013).

In this paper, beliefs are conceptualised as the teacher’s espoused theories—beliefs guiding their actions, while teacher’s reflections are viewed as theories-in-use—theories determining the action (Argyris & Schön, 1974; Schön, 1991). Theories-in-use can be explored as teacher’s reflection-in-action. However, exploring teacher’s reflection in action is challenging due to its effect on their teaching. Thus, a method where teachers are stimulated to reflect on action retrospectively is often used instead (Schön, 1991). This way of facilitating teachers’ critical reflection on their own beliefs and those underlying their actions (double-loop learning), may provide insight into teachers’ tacit and explicit beliefs and reflections about learning and teaching (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith, 1985; Schön, 1991).

Much research has established that teachers’ beliefs and reflections are difficult to explore since they cannot be observed or measured directly (Fives & Gill, 2015). Beliefs and reflections, which are recognised as both tacit and explicit, must be articulated to be explored (Fives & Gill, 2015. Moreover, teachers might not be aware of their own beliefs and reflections, and they may find it difficult to verbalise tacit knowledge and automated behaviour (Calderhead, 1981; Sherin & van Es, 2005). There are several methods that are considered to be sufficient on their own to either explore teachers’ beliefs or teachers’ reflections (Fives & Gill, 2015; Kane, Sandretto, & Heath, 2002). However, many researchers argue that few studies have succeeded combining methods that actually investigate both teachers beliefs and reflections at the same time (Fang, 1996; Fives & Gill, 2015; Kagan, 1992; Kane et al., 2002). Consequently, the research field is constantly looking for better ways to explore both teachers’ beliefs and reflections at the same time, especially those about learning and teaching, which are connected to effective teaching and successful student learning (Calderhead, 1996; Fives & Gill, 2015; Kagan, 1992; Nespor, 1987).

This paper argues for methodical triangulation consisting of different reflective dialogues and visual reflection tools like teaching plans, belief maps and video viewing, to explore teachers’ tacit and explicit beliefs and reflections.

The research questions guiding the current paper is: How can methodical triangulation explore and identify teachers’ beliefs and reflections about learning and teaching?

The methodical triangulation consisting of three reflective dialogues combined with the use of different visual reflection tools, including teaching plans, belief maps and video viewing: I) Reflective dialogue about learning , II) Reflective dialogue about teaching (teaching plans), III) Construction of belief maps, and IV) Video-stimulated reflective dialogue (belief maps and video recordings). Placed within a social constructivist paradigm with an explorative design (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008; Jacobsen, 2015), data material was generated in step I, II and IV. Seven lower secondary teachers (T1-T7) volunteered to participated in the study. An individual reflective dialogue (I) was conducted late spring 2016 with seven teachers, aiming to generate data on the teachers’ beliefs about learning. The dialogue was in the form of a qualitative interview (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015), lasted about 120 minutes. The second reflective dialogue about teaching (II) was conducted with the seven teachers early fall 2016 and lasted about 110 minutes. The aim of this dialogue was to explore the teachers’ beliefs about teaching and the reasoning behind their preferred way of teaching. This dialogue also took the form of a qualitative interview (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015), inspired by the “think-aloud-protocol” (Someren et al., 1994), were teachers are invited to think aloud when they plan lessons. Based on the phenomenographic analysis (Bowden & Walsh, 2000) of the two first dialogues (I and II), individual belief maps were constructed by the researcher. Data were generated from a reflection-on-action (Schön, 1987, 1991) in a VSR dialogue (IV), in which the participants governed their own reflection process (Moyles et al., 2002). The VSR dialogues were conducted with six teachers (one withdrew from the study) in 2017 and lasted about 60-90 minutes. The teacher’s beliefs map were used as mirror data (Cole & Engeström, 2007) to reflect their articulated beliefs about learning and teaching. Data analysis The data material consists of transcribed texts (20) from each dialogue (I, II and IV), and include the teachers comments on the value of each step and the study as a whole. The data material were analysed using a descriptive analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). This analytical method is an reflective process that bring forth both the teachers’ and the researcher’s voices, were data need to be collected and organized in appropriate parts (Postholm, 2010).

The overall results show that the methodical triangulation worked in a multifaceted way and contributed to a more nuanced and in-depth exploration and identification of teachers’ beliefs and reflections. The results indicate that the researcher was an essential prerequisite for the methodical triangulation to work (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995), acting as a ‘reflective catalyst’. It is reasonable to say that the first steps of the methodical triangulation led to an extended awareness of the teachers’ own beliefs for both parties. The researcher was thus able to identify the teachers tacit and explicit beliefs about learning and teaching, while the teachers gained insight into the beliefs underlying their practice. The results indicate that the belief map helped the teachers’ to become aware of their own articulated beliefs of learning and teaching, thus promoting critical thinking (Dewey, 2013). The results indicate that the awareness of one’s own beliefs strengthened the teachers’ pedagogical self-confidence. Results show that the teachers were often ‘caught’ in the visual stimuli (Calderhead, 1981), which led to mostly spontaneous comments as they watched video of their own teaching (IV). The results also show that spontaneous reflections and use of beliefs (maps) when reflecting on the action (video) also occurs. In this process, the belief maps were valuable analytical tools for the researcher, enabling her to ask in-depth and exploratory questions. The result indicate that the methodical triangulation stimulated teachers to an extended exploration of own beliefs and reflections. This is supported by the teachers’ claiming that new thoughts were explored, challenged and communicated, which resulted in new thinking and reflections. It is reasonable to surmise that the methodical triangulation stimulated teachers’ to engage in a hermeneutic process (Gadamer, 2012), increasing their awareness and examination of their beliefs and reflections about learning and teaching (Dewey, 2013).

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