A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

The Chilean Champion Teachers project 
– and other contexts
‘Exploratory Action Research’, the approach presented in 
this book, was originally developed in the context of a joint 
British Council–Ministry of Education project in Chile which
is currently in its fifth year.
1
This programme is innovative in being directed specially
at secondary school teachers in a public education system. 
The ideas developed in the context of this programme have 
also already shown their worth in India and Nepal (in the 
context of projects run by the All India Network of English 
Teachers (AINET), the British Council Aptis Action Research 
Award Schemes (AARMS) in both India and Nepal, and 
Gauhati University, Assam. They have also been incorporated 
into a TESOL CALL Interest Section Electronic Village Online 
(2017 and 2018) and are being spread via a Champion 
Teachers programme organised by the British Council in 
Peru (2017–18).
The Ministry of Education in Chile is planning to distribute 
this book to secondary teachers in Chile, recommending its 
use within teacher ‘networks’ (teacher self-help groups). The 
book will also be promoted (by the Ministry of Education and 
the British Council in Chile) for use in pre-service teacher 
education programmes, and will also serve as a suitable 
introduction to more academic research approaches. 
While particularly situated in and appropriate to Chilean 
experience, and using concrete examples from the 
Champion Teachers project, we hope the book will appeal 
also to a worldwide readership of teachers and teacher 
educators in comparable circumstances.
1 
For more information on the Champion Teachers programme and the development of the Exploratory Action Research approach, see 
‘Teacher-research as CPD: A project with Chilean secondary school teachers’ by Richard Smith, Tom Connelly and Paula Rebolledo (2014),
in Innovations in the Continuing Professional Development of English Language Teachers (edited by David Hayes for the British Council); also, 
‘Exploratory action research: why, what, and where from?’ by Richard Smith (2015), in Teacher-researchers in Action (edited by Kenan Dikilitas, 
Richard Smith and Wayne Trotman for IATEFL Research SIG). 

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