A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

4. Reflective writing by students
Here we move into thinking about how to gather others’ 
perceptions about a situation, in this case students’ 
perceptions (opinions, thoughts, feelings).
Reflective writing by students is a good way to explore 
their perceptions. You can ask students to write down – in 
their own mother tongue or in English (the choice is yours!) 
– what they feel or think about a particular topic. They 
could write freely, in note form, on a piece of paper that you 
give them in the last 5–10 minutes of a class, for example 
(answering a question that you write on the board or 
dictate to them) – or they could write for homework.
One advantage of this kind of evidence is that opinions / 
feelings can be expressed openly, especially if you don’t 
require students to write their names. You can learn things 
you didn’t know already. However, the opinions / feelings 
you learn about may not be shared by many in the class. 
You can check this by following up with a questionnaire 
(see 7 below).

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How can I explore? | 
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5. Notes or recordings of focus group discussions
Something else you could do to discover students’ (or other 
teachers’, or parents’) perceptions of a particular issue is to 
get a group of them together outside class time and ask the 
group for their opinions and thoughts. In this kind of group 
conversation or ‘focus group discussion’, it’s important that 
you try to get members of the group talking with one 
another as freely as possible, instead of you being at the 
centre of attention all the time – so, after one person 
replies to a question, you should look around the group and 
invite others to respond or contribute additional opinions 
or thoughts. After a while, it may not be necessary for you 
to do this – in other words, the discussion among members 
of the group themselves may start to flow more naturally.
If the conversation starts to go away from the focus of your 
research, however, direct it gently back towards your 
research topic. 
One advantage of focus group discussions is that you
can get several people’s opinions in a relatively short time. 
You can also sometimes find that people go deeper into
a topic than in an individual interview, because other 
people’s opinions stimulate them to share more. On the 
other hand, it can be difficult to find a convenient time
for several people to get together.