Smith Rebolledo (2018). handbook for Exploratory AR (1)
C. Assist the teacher find answers in her own context
before leaping into action
4.5 Your own questions In order to come up with your own exploratory questions,
you can think of questions which (1) explore your own
perceptions, (2) explore others’ perceptions (in particular,
students’) and (3) explore behaviour (your students’ and
also yours!).
1. Exploring your own perceptions is important for
identifying why a situation is important to you, what
you understand about it and what you expect,
particularly if you are unhappy with it. In the case of
Andrea in Chapter Three, she needed to understand
what a wrapping up was in order to establish why she
was dissatisfied with the way she developed this stage
in her lessons. Consequently, she needed to explore
her views of an effective wrapping up.
2. Exploring others’ perceptions is also an important
focus, since you need to know what your learners
(or sometimes parents, or your colleagues) think
and/or feel in a particular situation in order to fully
understand it. In 4.4 above, Teresa asked her students
about their preferences regarding speaking tasks,
since she felt students were not communicating
effectively in English in her class – in other words, she
asked students what they thought of activities in order
to understand this situation from their perspectives.
3. By exploring your students’ and also your own
behaviour, you will get a clear picture of what actually
happens in the classroom; what you do and what your
students do. Both Andrea and Teresa had this focus on
behaviour: Andrea looked at the way her students
behaved at the end of the lesson and Teresa explored
what she and her students did to practise speaking.
In this way, both Andrea and Teresa obtained
important and, in some ways, surprising data about
what they do, the way they teach and the way their
students react to their teaching.
