A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

Task 5.5 @
Based on Mauro’s story, look at the table below and 
complete it by noting the kinds of data he collected to 
answer his exploratory questions. Use the list of kinds
of data shared with you in 5.1 above.
Teacher
Research question
Kind(s) of data
Mauro
1. How do my students behave when they are 
sitting individually?
2. How does the seating arrangement affect 
individual work?
3. How do students feel about individual work?

---

49 
| How can I explore?
5.3 Combining information from 
different sources
You may have noticed from the Chilean Champion 
Teachers’ stories we’ve considered in this chapter 
(Andrea’s, Mauro’s and Teresa’s), that they all collected 
information from more than one source. For example, 
Mauro recorded one of his lessons, got a colleague to 
observe him and also gave a questionnaire to his students. 
Combining different sources of information has a number 
of advantages. 
One advantage is that it builds up a more complete picture 
of a situation than just collecting data from one source.
For example, you can use a questionnaire to find out the 
main difficulty your learners have with writing, but this may 
not help you to understand why this is difficult for them. 
Interviewing learners can help with this understanding, 
since you can ask them to expand on their answers, but 
without the questionnaire, you wouldn’t have known how 
many students have this difficulty in the first place!
Another advantage is that collecting different types of 
information can help you to confirm what you see from one 
source, making your research more reliable. For example, 
Mauro’s colleague noticed that most of his learners did 
activities best when working in pairs. When Mauro watched 
the video recording of his lesson, he also noticed that they 
seemed to be interacting effectively and were helping
each other when they worked in pairs, while in their 
questionnaire answers, most of his students said that they 
did prefer to work in pairs. If you get information from
only one source, it can be useful to help you understand
a situation but it may not be reliable, in other words you 
may not be able to depend on it to make conclusions.
The process of obtaining data from different sources –
in order to confirm understanding of a situation – is called 
‘triangulation’. To put it in simple terms, it involves looking 
at a problem from two or more different points of view.
Task 5.7 @
There are sometimes advantages to collecting different 
types of data in a specific order. Let’s use an example to 
make this clear:
You have noticed that about half your students either don’t 
do their homework, or do it badly, and you want to find out 
more to explore this situation. As this is not something that 
happens in the classroom, collecting the data directly (e.g. 
by observing them) is not possible, so you have decided to 
choose the following three methods of data collection: