Judith Hanks

Language teachers making sense of Exploratory Practice

This article critically examines the implementation of Exploratory Practice in an English for academic purposes (EAP) context in a British university. The innovation involved challenges as well as opportunities for uniting learning, teaching and research. Particular emphasis is given to two teachers, who are the focus of this article: the story of one, ‘Jenny’, illustrates the processes of doing Exploratory Practice with learners of EAP, while the story of the other, ‘Bella’, provides insight into the notion of puzzlement, a central feature of the Exploratory Practice framework. For these practitioners, it was clear that the integration of pedagogy with locally relevant, small-scale research activity, held a wealth of opportunities for language learning and teaching.

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.

Conclusion: Developing in/through Exploratory Practice

This concluding chapter provides a summary of the themes in the previous chapters, and comments on our own developing understandings of the Exploratory Practice principles. We bring together our experiences as mentors, researchers, teachers, and learners engaging in practitioner research. We consider the growing impact of Exploratory Practice as it provides an original and rigorous form for practitioners to develop new ideas and insights relevant for the field of professional development in language education.

Mentoring Language Teaching Professionals in/through Exploratory Practice

This chapter tells the story of our experiences of starting Exploratory Practice (EP) in a new and vibrant setting (Professional Development in Turkey and Northern Cyprus). We explore in-service language teacher education with the introduction of EP as an inquiry-based tool for professional development. Engaging teachers as learners of ‘doing-being’ research can be a catalyst for developing from a focus on practitioners as passive recipients of knowledge to active generators of understandings and knowledge. However, this shift poses epistemological challenges for teachers who do not yet have or are still developing a researcher identity. Together with teachers, teacher educators and curriculum developers, we work to understand the complexities of our various educational contexts.

Integrating Research and Pedagogy

This chapter, along with Chaps. 9 and 10, examines a number of ways in which practitioners have experienced Exploratory Practice (EP) in different contexts, with different groups of practitioners. In the following pages, we see EP inviting practitioners to use their research activities as a way of getting their work done as advocated by Allwright and Hanks (2009). We follow up the vignettes begun in Part One: What happened when teachers and learners like Bella, Cheer, John, Meow, and others tried out EP in their own classrooms?

Puzzles, Puzzling, and Trust

This chapter is about understanding for practice – if you want to try Exploratory Practice (EP) (and hopefully this book has convinced you that it is worth considering), what do you need to think about? How to access those elusive puzzles that fly around our brains? How to capture life ‘as it flies’?

Perspectives on the ‘Family’ of Practitioner Research

This book focuses on Exploratory Practice (EP), but in order to understand EP, we need to consider earlier influential movements in educational research. What are the questions, answered, unanswered, and unanswerable, that are raised here? To begin with, I consider a range of approaches to practitioner research, focusing particularly on two closely related movements: Action Research (AR) and Reflective Practice (RP). Each of these is clearly differentiated, while also acknowledging the family relationships, and shared values, that tie these various family members together. In doing so, I critically consider the challenges that practitioner-researchers face, and raise further questions about practitioner research.

Puzzles, Puzzling, and Puzzlement

Resting on the assumption that puzzling about an issue is more conducive to developing understanding than trying to solve a problem, Exploratory Practice (EP) recommends commencing with ‘puzzlement’, and encourages the practitioners themselves to investigate, rather than relying on external researchers, as a way of developing understandings. In 2009, we merely touched on these issues:

Introduction to Part 3

Part Three invites you to consider your responses to Exploratory Practice (EP) in your own contexts. How might you, whether you are a learner, or teacher, or teacher educator, or educational psychologist (etc.), begin? What might you actually do to investigate? What can you (we) learn from what others have already done, and what are the pitfalls to watch out for? In the worksheets, vignettes, case studies, and references to published work by others, I hope to demonstrate the range and potential of EP. Once again, though, I should state clearly that these are not steps to be followed; there is no recipe, no ‘one right way’, but rather a multitude of possible ways, which might inspire readers to engage in their own EP work. Part Three, then, is about developing our understandings for practice, in the sense of ‘What might an interested practitioner do (to start off, to continue, to take further) with EP?’, adding also ‘What questions do we still need to ask of/about EP?’. In sum: ‘What can we learn for practice?’

From Research to Practitioner Research: Setting Exploratory Practice in Context

In this chapter I first consider the notion of ‘research’ in education. What does it mean, and why does it matter? I then examine the proliferating field of practitioner research. This is a wide and varied field, however, so I progressively narrow the scope. Starting with the origins and influences of practitioner research, I consider the reasons for its recent growth. Despite its popularity, a critical look shows that there are a number of questions which remain unanswered. In later chapters, we see how Exploratory Practice (EP) seeks to address some of these questions.