Dick Allwright

The ‘Web of Life’ of the Rio de Janeiro Exploratory Practice Group

Previous chapters have included examples of inclusive practitioner research conducted by teachers and learners in relatively isolated professional situations (from China, Hong Kong, and Israel), but most of our examples have been drawn from members of the Rio de Janeiro Exploratory Practice Group (henceforth the ‘Rio EP Group’ or ‘the Group’). This Group has for many years offered a powerful example of inclusive practitioner research. Indeed, it is principally in their work that the principles as well as the practices of EP have emerged and evolved. We therefore invited them to describe their work together, as a multi-voiced case study in sustained collegiality. Highlighting their voices here further underpins the principles of EP we have been advancing in this book. Their account is our Chapter 14.

Sources and Resources

We have two main sections in Part IV: sources and resources. ‘Sources’ are places to go to for more information and ideas that will feed an interest in our sort of inclusive practitioner research. Because there is relatively little that directly addresses our particular concerns, let alone addresses learners, we have added a selection of ‘resources’. These are items, including classroom materials, that can be photocopied and used directly by teachers and/or learners to pursue that interest in practice. We hope this book will encourage teachers and learners (especially) to enrich the sources and resources by contributing some of their own, perhaps via the EP website: http://www.letras.puc-rio.br/epcentre.

Learner Variables and the Learner

This chapter will: survey ‘aptitude’, ‘the good language learner’, ‘learning styles and strategies’, ‘learner training’ and ‘attitude and motivation’ to see how the traditions and concerns in these areas of learner variables research imply particular views of the learner; discuss how such views relate to our Five Propositions; show that there are some encouraging signs of a greater acceptance of the highly complex and essentially social nature of classroom language learning; conclude, however, that the field has disappointed us, because of its focus on categorising and classifying people.

Method and the Learner

This chapter will: survey the last few decades of thinking and research on language teaching methods in relation to the developing view of the learner; show how the behaviourist approach, the cognitive approach and then the move towards a socio-psychological approach all had important implications for how learners were viewed; document the arrival of a potentially radical new view of learners, with autonomous language learning and the communicative approach; appraise the generally disappointing impact of new technologies; outline the latest thinking about method, challenging views of the learner once again.

Getting Started on Working for Understanding

This chapter will: show how Exploratory Practice can enable learners, as well as teachers, to develop their own agendas by identifying research ‘puzzles’ and turning them into researchable questions; suggest ways in which such inclusive practitioner research can become a productive and sustainable part of learners’ lives; consider some of the doubts that might arise, and reassurances that can be offered, when practitioners — learners as well as teachers — undertake something like this; use case studies to illustrate how teachers and learners have begun exploring their puzzles.

General Introduction: Learners, and What We Think of Them

This chapter will: explain what we mean by calling learners key developing practitioners; introduce five propositions about this view of learners; explain why we believe these propositions are important; outline our plans for the whole book.

Teacher Training and the Learner

This chapter will: examine how the processes of teacher training may establish, for good or ill, career-long beliefs about learners; identify two major barriers to the incorporation of our Five Propositions and analyse their implications; provide a perspective on developments within the processes of teacher training, showing how they reflect developments in the teaching profession as a whole and how they relate to our Five Propositions.

Assessment and the Learner

This chapter will: consider the nature of educational assessment in our field and assess its contribution to our view of learners; contrast ‘standards’ and ‘standardisation’ and assess the problematic role of standardisation in hindering the adoption and implementation of our Five Propositions; discuss alternative, potentially promising, approaches to language assessment.

Going Beyond Experiments: Descriptive and Qualitative Classroom Research

This chapter will: consider the contribution of descriptive and qualitative classroom research to our understanding of classroom language learning; conclude that its main contribution has been to establish the essentially social nature of classroom language learning; show, via an analysis of one research project, how the social nature of the research enterprise, as well as of pedagogy itself, makes third-party classroom research so problematic for our purposes.

Developing Understandings In and Beyond the Classroom

This chapter will: briefly review our overall argument, focusing on the central theme that learners, by becoming practitioner-researchers, can develop as practitioners of learning; discuss the case for the dissemination of EP, emphasising the crucial importance of sharing in the continuous process of developing understandings; show how learners, as well as teachers, can share their understandings and their experiences, in and beyond the classroom; evaluate EP as a research model for understanding the developing learner; evaluate EP as a model for pedagogy, highlighting its contribution to the development of mutual trust among learner and teacher practitioners; consider the sustainability of EP as a teaching and learning practice.