A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

 
How can I explore? | 
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8. Lesson plans and materials
So far, we have been considering sources of information 
about perceptions – your own and those of others 
(students’, parents’ or your colleagues’). Now we move into 
looking at different kinds of behaviour. Lesson plans, and 
materials you prepare for your lessons, can be quite useful 
for this, if you write notes on them or about them during
or immediately after the class.
For example, let’s imagine that you’re interested in why you 
always seem to run out of time and why you never finish 
your lesson plan. On your lesson plan, you could make sure 
to write how long you intend to spend on each activity. 
During the lesson you – or someone observing you – could 
write down how long each activity actually took. Then you 
can know which activities took longer than expected and 
you can begin to think of reasons why. You can write other 
kinds of notes on lesson plans or on lesson materials, too.
Of course, it can be easier to know what happened in a 
lesson if you have a recording (9. below) or if someone else 
watches your lesson (10. below). 
9. Lesson recordings
Making either an audio- or a video-recording of your lesson 
can help you to understand what’s going on in your class 
from a new and different perspective. You can simply play 
the recording and use it to take notes about things you may 
have missed when you were teaching, or, if you have time, 
you can transcribe parts of the lesson to get a good, 
objective record of what went on in the classroom talk 
(yours, the students’ or both). In fact, if your research 
questions relate to any aspect of classroom talk (for 
example, if you’re concerned about the way you give 
instructions or ask questions, or the way students respond 
to your attempts to correct their mistakes), then making
a recording and transcribing parts of it will be almost 
essential – even though you can also get good insights
by asking a critical friend to observe your class (see 10. 
below).
Before you attempt to make a recording, consider carefully 
– according to your research questions – what you are 
interested in ‘capturing’. If you are just interested in some 
aspect of classroom talk and not other kinds of behaviour, 
then an audio-recording might be sufficient, but a video-
recording can help you pinpoint who is speaking, if that is 
important. If, on the other hand, you are most interested in 
your own classroom talk, then an audio-recorder can be 
placed on your desk, near where you normally speak from, 
and you do not need to worry so much about capturing 
other voices. It can be quite hard to record students’ voices 
in whole class interaction, and in this case a video-
recording of the class will be more useful, perhaps 
combined with notes that you or an observer takes about 
who speaks when.