A River of paper and ink: conducting an autodidactic practice review

The practice review is recommended for practice-as-research projects, and yet there is relatively little guidance as to how to undertake such a review. One significant exception is the work of Dr. Emily Pott, whose paper, ‘The Literature/Practice Review: Use of Creative Practice During the Review Period and Its Potential to Reshape Research Projects,’ was published in Research in Post-Compulsory Education in 2021. The present article applies and expands on Pott’s work concerning the practice review, which embraces the tool of recreative practice. In particular, the Harkey extends the practice review into the domain of self-directed learning, advocating an autodidactic practice review. Using her own case as an example, she considers a skill gap in her own development as a researcher, which she remediated by applying and adapting Pott’s recreative practice approach. She then explores a simple structure for an autodidactic practice review, and reviews the writing practices of novelist Stephen King and literary phenomenologist Maurice Blanchot. The article concludes with the acknowledgement that each research project makes unique demands, and therefore requires an expansion of the researcher’s skills. The autodidactic practice review provides a flexible tool for answering such knowledge gaps pertaining to creative and artistic research practices.