A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

‘Sign’: n. ‘Something regarded as an indication
of what is happening or going to happen’
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Signs of success can include seeing your students smiling 
while doing a task, or hearing them speak to each other 
about a task or feeling the task is going well from your own 
experience. This is useful and valid information. However, 
signs sometimes only provide a partial view of situations. 
They can: 
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ignore the perception of students
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give information only about one aspect of the situation
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mask other aspects of a situation that cannot be easily 
‘seen’ or heard’
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make us overlook information which can be useful to get 
new understandings of a situation. 
Some teachers we have been working with told us how their 
initial thoughts about a situation changed when they looked 
at it more closely, from other perspectives – in other words, 
when they opened their eyes and ears more and/or 
‘borrowed’ others’ eyes and ears. Here are a couple of 
examples; 
“This exploratory research helped me be more aware
of what I am doing in the classroom; unfortunately, I had 
been looking for what my students were doing wrong 
instead of what I was doing wrong. In other words, we 
need to have a look at the whole process before judging 
the students’ performance.” (Leyla Nuñez) 
“From this exploration, the first finding was very 
surprising for me. Before the research I thought they 
didn’t want me to speak in class. But in their answers to 
my questionnaire a little more than a half of them said 
they wanted a class in English. It was a total change
of my point of view.” (Daniel Santana) 
“As a teacher, when we have doubts about our own 
methods in the lesson, we need to focus on our students’ 
interests before focusing on the content. We usually think 
that the content is the problem, but it may not be that.” 
(Camila Villalobos)
These teachers realised that by taking a more careful look 
at a particular situation, their views changed. In other 
words, the signs they previously had of what was working 
or not working were incomplete or simply inappropriate to 
explain a situation. This is why the collection of additional 
information is important and is needed for understanding
a situation better, in greater detail and from different 
perspectives. The information collected can be useful to 
make interpretations of a given situation turn into evidence 
of what happened. 
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Oxford English Dictionary
I saw
I heard
I felt

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