EPCentre
NEWSLETTER
NUMBER TWO
JANUARY 2002
CONTENTS
EDITOR’S NOTE
EP NEWS
The promised Website
From Lancaster University, UK
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Istanbul, Turkey
Sarjah, the United Arab Emirates
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES
NEW THINKING
NEW WRITING
UPCOMING WRITING
EP-RELATED RESEARCH
PhD research completed outside and at Lancaster
PhD research upgraded at Lancaster
Post-PhD academic work
NEXT MOVES
YOUR FEEDBACK
About Newsletter and website
Appendix I: Doing Research that Matters
Appendix II: Principles of EP
Appendix III: EP at Municipio 2001
Appendix IV: EP at Colégio Teresiano 2001
Appendix V: EP at Practicum, PUC-Rio 2001
Appendix VI: EP at MA Programme, PUC-Rio 2002
BRAZIL-BASED EDITING /EDITOR’S NOTE
Little did we know a few days after my Viva last July, when I gladly/cheerfully accepted Dick’s
challenging proposal for me to edit a Brazil-based second issue of our EPCentre Newsletter,
that I would only find the time and the energy to start the present editing job in December. It
all seemed quite feasible then, as I was starting my ‘post-PhD’ life! But, in fact, I faced a
heavy teaching load and quite an active Exploratory Practice term back in Rio de Janeiro.
With editorial support from my EPCentre colleagues (Dick Allwright, Graham Hall, Judith
Hanks, Morag Samson and Zongjie Wu) I organised the information that was contributed by
the growing worldwide EP community as well as the substantial contributions from the
Exploratory practitioners in Rio de Janeiro. So, six months later, the present ‘Brazil-based’
issue of our Newsletter is finally out to share our latest work at the Exploratory Practice
Centre and the collaborative developments of ‘decentralised’ Exploratory Practice in general.
As a group we have been quite keen on finding ways to reach out ‘as far as possible’. We
have taken the apparently redundant decision to spread this Newsletter both by e-mail and
through our EPCentre website. We have been constantly reminding ourselves, however, that
despite the apparent globalised access to the internet, it should not be taken for granted in
every professional context in all parts of the world. On the contrary, it is still surely only a
relatively small, if growing, minority who do have access to the internet. For this reason,
please help us by circulating/posting a hard copy of this issue to share our EPNews with
students, colleagues, and/or friends.
A related concern with overloading computer-mediated information has also led us to reflect
on the relationship between the Newsletter and the website. We have included some short
substantive material in the body of the Newsletter and have ‘linked’ more extensive
documents to the webpage. We count on your feedback in our search for the best possible
balance!
Inés Miller
‘Brazil-based’ editor for this issue
EP NEWS
THE PROMISED WEBSITE
As some (though not all) of you may know, we have finally been on the web since July 2001!
Thanks to Zongjie’s technical skills and enormous goodwill, as well as to the collaborative
efforts of EPCentre members, we have put together an initial version that we have shared
with some people, hoping to improve it as much as possible before announcing it ‘officially’.
Some ideas for improvement have come to mind, and we have been trying to find as much
time as possible to work on them despite our heavy workloads. We are aware that we still
have a long way to go, but we have decided to share with you what we could offer up to now
and count on your feedback to develop further the idea of a more wide-ranging website
coverage of Exploratory Practice.
FROM LANCASTER UNIVERSITY
Resource packs available by request and on the web
At the EPCentre here we have been regularly preparing a number of resource packs about
Exploratory Practice. They have been the main source for the website and for the electronic
folder in disk form that preceded it. So far we have mailed or handed hard-copy packs for use
in Canada, China, London, Turkey, Mexico, Denmark, and electronic versions of the material
to academic visitors from Barcelona, Porto, Budapest, and Tel Aviv. We have been
considering the possibility of encouraging these and/or other interested colleagues to become
regional representatives, if they find any mileage in the ideas of Exploratory Practice and if
they feel that these packs (and additional material we could provide) have/could become
basic reading material for teacher development sessions, courses, seminars or research
groups. In the section ‘Coming soon, perhaps to a place near you’ below you will find some of
the feedback we have received on these packs and snippets of some brainstorming
discussion on what it might mean ‘to have’ or ‘to be’ EP regional representatives.
Resource packs for differing needs and an EP archive
We are still trying to find the time to develop the resource pack idea, with the thought that we
might make packs available to meet the differing needs of newcomers and people with some
experience, for example. We are also still working on trying to establish a fully
comprehensive EP archive to draw on whenever we get requests for help with the huge mass
of literature that interest in Exploratory Practice has generated over the years.
Contributions to a Lancaster mini-event
On July 18th 2001, Dick Allwright, Inés Miller and Zongje Wu, on behalf of the EPCentre,
organised the mini-event “Doing Research that Matters”. Our aim was to discuss the issue of
reconciling the ultimate purposes of our research with the more mundane, and sometimes
conflicting, requirements of our employing institutions. Considering that we had no time to
announce it outside Lancaster, and that it was held in the summer, we were pleased to see
that the agenda we proposed for the 3-hour mini-event attracted 18-20 interested local
participants that included research students from different parts of the world and some faculty
members. We are sharing with you, in Appendix I, Doing Research that Matters, the event
structure and a preliminary edited version of the resulting documents that were produced by
group discussants. We hope that the material will stimulate you to engage in the discussion
and to propose ‘next moves’.
Contributions to Lancaster courses and research groups:
Dick Allwright has continued to include the ideas of Exploratory Practice in MA courses at
Lancaster, and is encouraged by the interest generated that way.
In November 2001, Dick went on another visit to Hong Kong teaching on Lancaster’s MA
TESOL programme there, and was able to follow up on the interested group of students who
have been using the ideas of Exploratory Practice. Several are using EP as the basis for their
dissertation work, and the work so far is so encouraging that we hope to be able to include it
in a future edition of this Newsletter, perhaps to be edited from Hong Kong itself. Meanwhile,
all the Hong Kong MA students have now got their personal copy of our Resource Pack.
In October 2001, Dick Allwright, Morag Samson, Lining Yang, Zongjie Wu, as representatives
of the other members of the EPCentre – Graham Hall, in Newcastle; Judith Hanks, in Leeds,
and Inés Miller, in Rio de Janeiro – and of other people who have been engaged in or
incorporated Exploratory Practice in their research, brought to the planning session of the
Teacher Research and Teacher Development Research Group (TRTDRG) what Dick called a
‘friendly take-over bid’.
The idea resulted from the EPCentre members’ long-standing wish to hold more systematic
discussions on Exploratory Practice-related issues during research group meetings. As a
group, we know that we have got a huge amount of work to do and that research group
discussions are invaluable opportunities to collectively develop some of the ‘thinking’ that we
still feel needs to be done on Exploratory Practice. We are very pleased to say that this term’s
research group participants have accepted our proposal and that we have had a series of
highly productive and enriching discussions.
Should you be interested in being informed about our research group on-going programme
with a view to joining the sessions or participating in these discussions ‘at a distance’, please
get in touch with Zongjie Wu (z.wu@lancaster.ac.uk) requesting to be included in the
research group mailing list. All these meetings are normally audio-recorded and we could
therefore send you the tape of a session that you may find particularly interesting or useful.
Strengthening links with other academics interested in similar issues
Earlier in 2001, Dick attended a research seminar in Lancaster’s Management School, run by
Frank Blackler (of Lancaster) and Andy Kennedy (of the King’s Fund, a research foundation).
Especially interesting was the discovery that work in the highest levels of management is now
looking at ‘quality of life’ as an issue that may deserve priority over ‘quality of work’.
On January 21st 2002, we held a special session of our Teacher Research and Teacher
Development Research Group with Frank Blackler as our guest. To reflect our motivation to
discussing our common interests in issues of ‘work’ and ‘life’ in organisations, the negotiated
title for the session was: “Desire and management development: Issues relating to
Exploratory Practice”. The discussion was based on our reading of a paper in which he and
Andy Kennedy reflect on their experience designing development programmes for top
managers in the English National Health Service. Dick Allwright, Inés Miller, Zongjie Wu and
Cristina Pinto da Silva represented the thinking and experience within the Exploratory
Practice paradigm. Dick shared his very latest version of the EP principles and Inés talked the
group through the ‘life history’ of the Exploratory Practice work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We
are pleased to say that Frank became extremely interested in becoming more familiarised
with the principles of Exploratory Practice as a form of practitioner research that prioritises
understanding and ‘quality of life in the classroom’ as well as with the recent developments of
the EPCentre. We hope to see such connections developing fruitfully.
Also in January 2002, Lancaster welcomed Yrjö Engeström, founder of Activity Theory, for a
series of talks. His ideas also link in very well with EP’s concern for understanding as the key
issue.
Withdrawal from projects:
Many of you will know that Lancaster closed its Institute for English Language Education at
the end of September 2001. This inevitably meant Lancaster’s withdrawal from a number of
projects (briefly described in our first Newsletter) that promised well in EP terms. We are still
hopeful that personal contact through Tony Luxon, Alan Waters and/or other people involved
will be maintained, of course, but the institutional framework has gone. This will be a further
test of the potential of non-institutionalised EP work.
FROM RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
A brief introductory background to our recent EP news
There are two points that we, the current EP Group in Rio, would like to highlight before we
share some fragments of our most recent EP work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The first relates to the difficulty of writing about lived human experience. We are aware that
the news we are reporting here and the practitioners’ ‘bits of thinking’ that we have included in
the Appendices are only illustrative fragments of our ‘unrepresentable’ involvement with
Exploratory Practice.
The second relates to our understanding, along with Allwright (2001, p.c.), that “Exploratory
Practice is to be represented by its principles, not by its practices, except in a purely
illustrative capacity.” Our teacher development work is, therefore, oriented by the set of
principles of Exploratory Practice (see Appendix II, EP Principles) and not by a set of
practices. We have over the years developed a ‘flexible’ set of practices but it is the principles
– not the practices of EP – that become inevitably recontextualised in each setting. This
process is driven by the uniqueness of participants’ socio-cultural contexts as well as by their
personal/professional individualities and relevant puzzlements.
The information that we are sharing with you below fits within the broader context of the
collaborative EP work that started in 1991 when Dick Allwright was acting as a consultant to
the Cultura Inglesa in Rio (Allwright and Lenzuen, 1997; Allwright, 2001b). This seminal
connection was kept and grew into a close professional relationship between Dick himself (at
a distance from Lancaster University, except for his 1997 visit); Ralph Bannell, UFF-Rio;
Maria Isabel Cunha, CAp-UFRJ; Inés Miller, PUC-Rio and Morag Samson, Lancaster-based
research student. As an inter-institutional group, we have been developing and disseminating
Exploratory Practice with Brazilian teachers since 1997 (Miller and Cunha, 1997; Miller and
Bannell, 1998; Miller, 2001; Samson, in progress).
The group’s long-term involvement with public sector municipal language teachers (English,
French, Portuguese and more recently Spanish) and a few teachers of other subjects
(geography, arts and physical education, for example) in the city of Rio de Janeiro was
mediated initially by the English Resource Centre, recently transformed into a centre to
provide pedagogic support to municipal foreign language teachers (CAPPLE), both under the
administration of the Secretaria Municipal de Ensino in Rio de Janeiro (SME-Rio).
With Dick only assisting at a distance, Ralph having been forced to distance himself due to a
heavy workload and Morag having left Rio after a very productive 2-year research/work stay,
Maria Isabel and Inés have been very lucky to have been working now on a regular basis with
the EP ‘multipliers’. Walewska G. Braga, Solange F. Braga, Júlia F. de Lima, Isolina Lyra and
Doreen V. Purcell are five teachers who initiated their EP work in 1997 but decided to
integrate the group as ‘multipliers’ and co-organisers of our ongoing work with public/private
teacher groups. From 1997 until 2000 the programme was developed on an entirely voluntary
basis for teachers, coordinators and multipliers. In 2001, the financial support provided by
CAPPLE to the coordinators was used to create a ‘fund’ for future EP initiatives.
What is clearly ‘unrepresentable’ about our involvement with EP is the growth of our
collaborative personal and professional development. Among innumerable aspects, we have,
over the years, worked for deeper understandings of our practice as workshop organisers
interested in the management of professional reflection. Grappling with issues of attendance
and sustainability has, for example, helped us discover the virtue of ‘flexible planning’ and
taught us to accept the impossibility of predicting and controlling the reflective process. We
are constantly working to understand our professional lives; in short, we have all embarked in
the indefinitely sustainable enterprise of becoming Exploratory practitioners. It is as such that
we are sharing our recent Exploratory Practice work within various contexts:
1. In teacher development programmes
Exploratory Practice at Municipio do Rio de Janeiro, 2001
From August to December 2001, Maria Isabel Cunha and Inés Miller ran a forty-hour EP
module (fortnightly sessions) joined by public sector teachers of Spanish and English
from the ‘municipio’ of Rio de Janeiro. They had originally been asked by the French,
Spanish and English teacher representatives who manage CAPPLE to focus on the broad
topic of ‘Culture’, presumably aiming at addressing issues within culture learning that
would interest a mixed group of foreign language teachers. This actually happened but
rather indirectly since, working within the framework of EP, participating teachers explicitly
reflected on various notions of ‘Culture’ (Holliday, 1999), read and critiqued published
research on Brazilian cultural identity (Barbosa, 1992; Da Matta, 1980) and related it all to
their practitioner-driven work to understand the socialisation processes taking place in
their classrooms (Allwright, 1996). Maria Isabel, the multipliers and Inés (when in Rio) met
to read, discuss and collaboratively select the texts during the first months of 2001.
The documents ‘MOTIVAÇÃO’ and ‘MOTIVATION’, which you can view in Appendix III,
Exploratory Practice at Municipio, 2001, illustrate the poster production that resulted
during a session in which the groups were beginning to reflect on the potential relations
that we could find between the teachers’ puzzles, their implicit beliefs and the underlying
socio-cultural aspects. We are presenting the original version in Portuguese and one
translated into English for the non-Portuguese readership.
The brief abstracts and the pictures stand as representations of what the group “lived”
during the 4-month period and on the afternoon of November 30th 2001. The teachers’
creative work for heightening their own and their learners’ understandings of aspects that
puzzle them about their classroom lives as well as their search for a visual representation
(posters, graphs, box, etc.) of this process cannot be reproduced. It was through the
integration of their investigative posture and their pedagogy that the teachers and their
learners worked to understand a lot more about themselves and their worlds inside and
outside their classrooms.
Our sense of achievement at having guided another group of puzzled teachers to work for
deeper understandings within the principles of Exploratory Practice is, likewise, a unique
and highly enriching personal and professional experience. We wish to emphasise the
especially pleasant and non-hierarchical atmosphere fostered by the managers of
CAPPLE, where teachers have met in a ‘neutral’ space and where they get collegiality
and support from each other, not necessarily from the heads of their schools or the
teachers they work with. Maybe these are the aspects that promote sustainability
(Samson, personal communication). Possibly, even more continuity could be
encouraged by trying to avoid concurrent teacher development activities.
References for background reading:
Allwright, Dick. 1996. Social and pedagogic pressures in the language classroom: The
role of socialisation. In H. Coleman (ed), Society and the language classroom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 209-228.
Barbosa, Lívia. 1992. O Jeitinho Brazileiro. A arte de ser mais igual que os outros. Rio
de Janeiro, Campus. P.31-47; 73-81; 83-96
Da Matta, Roberto. 1980. Carnavais, malandros e heróis. Para uma sociologia do dilema
Brazileiro. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar.
Holliday, Adrian. 1999. Small Cultures. Applied Linguistics, 20/2:237-264.
Exploratory Practice at Colégio Teresiano, 2001
Inés Miller also initiated Exploratory Practice work with some of the English and French
teachers at Colégio Teresiano, a private school that is generally known as PUC-Rio’s
laboratory school. Inés had had the long-standing dream of engaging Colégio Teresiano
teachers in Exploratory Practice work for two closely related reasons – not only for
considering it a promising paradigm for teacher development but also for believing that it
could be an exciting project to go in tandem with the Exploratory Practice work that she
had already been developing with her undergraduate students who do their Teaching
Practice course (classroom observation and practicum) at Colégio Teresiano.
Four (out of the five) teachers in the English team expressed their need and motivation to
‘do something as a group’ in August when, at a beginning-of-term meeting, Inés was
describing the ‘special’ in-coming group to the English team. The teacher-learners that
would be observing and teaching in their classes had spent the previous term reflecting
within the principles of Exploratory Practice. They had agreed to continue working within
the lines of EP, which would mean organising their observation and teaching practice
phase according to their sense of curiosity (preferably expressed as ‘why-question
puzzles’) about what happens in classrooms, rather than according to more or less
reflective ‘teacher-training’ approaches. Inés (probably prematurely, but with hope)
envisions hypothetical situations in which Teresiano teachers and PUC-Rio teacherlearners (and their learners!) can, in principle, engage in planning collaborative
Exploratory Practice work to understand their negotiated classroom puzzles. See work in
this direction with the undergraduate teacher-learners in b) below.
An open-ended series of fortnightly one-and-a-half hour sessions was thus agreed upon
by the representatives of the English group and Inés. It was decided that they would meet
at the school, at a free time slot for all, and that their French colleagues would also be
invited to join. The first session was, thus, attended – and greatly appreciated – by the
two entire teams (five English and four French teachers). It was, however, to be followed
up by the four English and the two French teachers who could really afford/find the time
and/or interest to continue. Four other sessions took place until they were ‘suspended’
due to overwhelming end-of the-year duties.
The teachers’ and Inés’ own expressed understanding of what went on during the
sessions points to the perceived personal and collective joy derived from finding out so
much about each other, despite long years of institutional ‘collegiality’. This feeling
emerged from being encouraged to share personal reflection on ‘why am I joining this
group’, ‘what normally happens in my classrooms’, ‘what I would like to do more and
why’, ‘what puzzles me about what goes in my lessons’. An especially ‘therapeutic’ sense
of collegiality also arose when this group of Teresiano teachers empathised with puzzles
that other Exploratory practitioners in Rio had also asked themselves, such as “Why are
my students only motivated by grades?”, “Why are my students so aggressive?”, “Why do
they ‘force’ me into being a disciplinarian?”, “Why do my students lack study skills?”,
among many others.
In Appendix IV, Exploratory Practice at Colégio Teresiano, 2001, we include two of the
handouts that the Exploratory Practice group in Rio have developed and adapted over the
years to generate personal professional reflection. Working from their individual
classroom narratives, teachers gradually collaborate in unearthing their implicit beliefs
and engage in expressing their classroom puzzles.
Since this was the first time for Exploratory Practice to be initiated within an institution in
Rio (outside the Cultura Inglesa), much reflection seems to be necessary for us to
understand what we learned from the experience. There was a statement of intention to
continue in 2002, probably outside the school grounds and hours (due to an ‘excessively’
familiar setting, ‘distracting’ school noise, etc.) to try to achieve higher degrees of
involvement and concentration on the professional development purpose of the sessions.
Exploratory Practice at Colégio Santo Inácio, 2002
Reflecting on the experience at Colégio Teresiano will be crucial and urgent, since Inés
Miller and Maria Isabel Cunha were invited (in December 2001) by the Portuguese and
English teams of Santo Inácio School, a highly prestigious private school in Rio de
Janeiro, to run at least a 40-hour module of Exploratory Practice in 2002. This initiative
arose from at least ten interested teachers and, having been accepted by the school’s
academic coordination, is going to be managed through the first university-school
partnership to be established through the Instituto de Pesquisa e Ensino de Linguas
(IPEL, PUC-Rio). Due to our concern that these teacher development sessions should
not be ‘imposed’ by the school on other teachers, we shall be running a recruiting ‘demoEP session’ on February 6th. We are carefully composing the invitation so as to convey
the Exploratory Practice focus on trying to understand our classroom puzzles.
In this new enterprise, we shall be recontextualising EP’s basic principles with a view to
enabling Santo Inácio teachers to sense (as others have before them) what happens in
their classroom lives when, by working within Exploratory Practice, they concentrate on
working for understanding. In doing so, we find that our work mirrors and/or is mirrored by
the ‘revised version’ of the Exploratory Practice principles as they foreground that “the
first priority is to address the issue of ‘quality of life’ in the classroom” and that “the most
appropriate way of achieving this is going to be working to understand that life” (Allwright
2001:7).
2. In undergraduate courses
Exploratory Practice at Practicum PUC-Rio, 2001
Inés Miller and her undergraduate ‘student-teachers’ taking the Prática de Ensino em
Lingua Inglesa (Teaching Practice in English Language) offered by the Departamento de
Letras, at PUC-Rio, Brazil, have just completed one-year (first and second semesters of
2001) of Exploratory Practice work. Inés has been lucky enough to work with a continuing
group of undergraduate students who, during the first term became especially motivated
to engage in professional reflection along the lines of the Exploratory Practice principles
and in the second term accepted Inés’ proposal to sustain the already familiar Exploratory
Practice approach to life in the classroom as a framework for the ‘practical’ component of
the course. It was a highly enriching experience for all those involved to try to understand
how the principles of Exploratory Practice, originally conceived to guide practising teacher
investigations, could become the backbone to the student-teachers’ school observations
and interventions as well as our university Teaching Practice course as a whole. Inés’
work is driven by her belief that creating opportunities for exposing teacher-learners to the
ideas of Exploratory Practice and for them to engage in Exploratory Practice as early as
possible in their courses is a potentially promising way of ‘planting the seeds’ for
sustainable practitioner (teacher and learner) development.
Appendix V, Exploratory Practice at Practicum PUC-Rio, 2001 contains some documents
produced during this one-year process: Inés’ planning diary notes and reflections on her
ongoing experience, some students’ puzzles and a sample of the potentially exploitable
pedagogic activities they developed during the course, a few selections of the students’
reflective discourse drawn from their written papers and/or personal communication. The
student group has of course read and discussed Inés’ notes and also authorised her to
share their reflections in this Newsletter and on the web.
3. In post-graduate programmes
Exploratory Practice at MA/PhD Programme, PUC-Rio, 2001
Lúcia Pacheco de Oliveira and Inés Miller discussed the ideas of Exploratory Practice as
a form of practitioner-based research in the post-graduate course, Linguagem e Ensino
(Language and Education), they were co-teaching at PUC-Rio from August to December
2001. Students read some of Allwright’s texts and a very fruitful discussion took place on
the day when Maria Isabel Cunha, Walewska G. Braga and Júlia F. de Lima (on behalf of
other members of the EP group in Rio) kindly joined the MA/PhD group to help make our
EP involvement ‘go public’. As on other such occasions, the walls were quickly covered
with posters representing EP work carried out since 1997 and a strong collegial
atmosphere emerged.
A very significant EP connection (for us) is due here: Maria Geralda P. Lanziotti, a
participant of the 1998 EP programme and now an EP practitioner herself is in the PUCRio MA programme and was taking the Linguagem e Ensino course. She played a very
active role in it, not only by taking every opportunity to ‘multiply’ with her colleagues the
importance of EP in her professional life but also by making a very important academic
contribution to our EP work. As part of her coursework, Maria Geralda established
stimulating connections between some of Vygotsky’s theoretical notions and what she
understands to be happening in EP sessions and, more generally, in the EP process of
professional development. Appendix VI, Exploratory Practice at MA Programme, PUCRio, 2001
Exploratory Practice at MA/PhD Programme, PUC-Rio, 2002
Even before the ‘recruitment exercise’ described above, some of the post-graduate
students taking the MA/PhD course mentioned above had asked Inés Miller to devote an
entire semester to the practitioner research paradigm of EP as one of the ‘supervised
research’ electives taken by MA/PhD students. This student-driven initiative, which was
gladly accepted by Inés, the departmental post-graduate coordinator and by the entire EP
Group, will enable us all to explore the paradoxical proposal of harnessing the
investigative motivation that attracts practising teachers to engage in MA/PhD academic
programmes and of disseminating the EP notion of sustainability in practitioner research.
The first group is starting in March, and we’re all hoping to have Dick in Rio to work with
us very soon.
4. In a learner development programme
Exploratory Practice at CAp-UFRJ, a Laboratory school
Maria Isabel Cunha is sustaining her Exploratory Learning work at the Laboratory School
of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Cap-UFRJ). Her colleagues and friends in the
EP group have been trying to convince her to share her work with others, but she has
been too busy organising and documenting the Rio EP activities reported in this
Newsletter. More on this documenting idea in our UPCOMING WRITING section.
5. In conferences
XVI Encontro Nacional de Professores Universitários de Língua Inglesa (ENPULI),
Universidade Federal de Londrina.
Maria Geralda Pereira Lanziotti went to Londrina, in early September of 2001, to take part
in the poster session at the XVI Encontro Nacional de Professores Universitários de
Língua Inglesa (ENPULI). The poster, under the title of “Prática Exploratória: Percepção
de Professores e Alunos dos Cursos de Licenciatura em Língua Inglesa na Formação do
Professor Reflexivo” (“Exploratory Practice: The perceptions of English language
teachers and student teachers in the development of reflective teachers”), focuses on the
extremely relevant role of EP in the academic life of ‘student teachers’. Maria Geralda has
used EP with teacher trainees in a private university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Associação dos Estudos da Linguagem do Rio de Janeiro (ASSEL-Rio),PUC-Rio.
In October 2001, during the XI Conference of the Associação dos Estudos da Linguagem
do Rio de Janeiro (ASSEL-Rio), David Shepherd, from UFF, coordinated a symposium in
which three of his MA students reported on Action Research projects that has focussed
on the issue of ‘Motivation in the English classroom’. It was interesting for Inés Miller, who
attended the presentations, to notice how the ideas of Exploratory Practice drawn from
Allwright (1993) and Miller and Cunha (1997) were ‘blended’ within the traditional Action
Research framework in ELT (Nunan, 1992). From the abstract and the presentations, it
appears that “a series of [EP] ‘pedagogic activities’” was used (at different points) by the
teacher-researchers to heighten their understanding of their classroom situations, which
were studied through overall cyclic Action Research processes. Inés thinks that all of us
involved in various forms of reflective teaching and/or teacher-based research might
enrich our understandings of our practices by engaging, for example, in sustained
reflection on “The three major processes of teacher development…” and especially on
Allwright’s (1999) highly complex but illuminating attempt at charting the processes
diagrammatically.
References:
Allwright, Dick. 1993. Integrating research and pedagogy: Appropriate criteria and
practical possibilities. In Teachers Develop Teachers Research, ed. J. Edge and K.
Richards, 125-135. Oxford: Heinemann.
Allwright, Dick. 1999. Three major processes of teacher development and the
appropriate design criteria for developing and using them. Invited plenary paper
presented at the ‘Research and Practice: Voices from the Field’ Teacher Education
Conference, Minneapolis, USA, May. Awaiting publication in the conference proceedings.
Miller, Inés K., and Maria Isabel A. Cunha. 1997. Exploring our classrooms – and our
teacher development sessions. In Perspectivas: O ensino da língua estrangeira, ed. E.
Taddei, 54-72. Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
6. In translation programmes
At PUC-Rio, Brazil and ISCAP, Portugal
The translation into Portuguese of three of Dick’s texts has been completed as part of the
students’ translation internship in the course of the first semester of 2001. The bulk of the
translation and revision work was very conscientiously undertaken by three translators-intraining and their supervisors. It is us, the EP Group in Rio, who now wish to apologise for
not having finished yet the final revision due to everybody’s terribly busy lives. We
promise, however, to do it shortly and let you know! Our primary motivation has been, of
course, to make some of Dick Allwright’s most recent thinking available to a wider
readership and to organise, in the near future, a forthcoming collection of Dick’s texts on
EP in Portuguese. The idea of joining efforts in this direction has led us to consider a
Luso-Brazilian enterprise coordinated by the EP Group in Brazil and Cristina Pinto da
Silva, ISCAP in Portugal.
FROM ISTANBUL, TURKEY
Hulya Bartu reports
EP is carrying on in full swing here in Turkey these days. We are about to complete a year's
work (of two semesters of about 14 weeks each in duration) with 13 of my MA (in ELT)
students, who have actively taken part in EP as part of a two semester compulsory course, at
Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul. The final product of this work will be (or I should say 'has
been') 7 (seven) written reports of research they have carried out, either individually or in subgroups, in their own contexts and areas of interest, for the benefit of other teachers and/or
researchers. We are also in the midst of looking for a publishing body (national or
international since they have been written in English) for these reports, which we thought
could very easily be complied in the form of a book, where I could also write the first article on
how we went about practising EP and achieving the reports as their course organizer, and
where we could also -we thought- ask an outsider, someone like yourself or Dick Allwright to
edit them if you could spare the time. (By the way, these students are all practising ELT
teachers in various institutions in Turkey since a two-years' teaching experience was a course
requirement initially). However, our efforts towards publication do not look promising in this
part of the world at the moment since perhaps like many other sectors and places in the
world- Turkey's publishing sector is in deep economic crisis. So if you would be interested in
helping us to get these reports published- in one form or another, we would really appreciate
it. We are desperately in need of such help, support, guidance and are open to any
suggestions from you and the Centre. We might also consider getting them published one or
two at a time in the Newsletter (perhaps in shorter form than ten-twelve pages, doublespaced, typed etc...as they are at present).
Meanwhile, EP at the Dept. of Educational Sciences (ELT) of Yildiz Technical University,
Istanbul will continue as part of the formal course requirements of the new MAs that are
coming in, in the second semester of this academic year (2001-2002) in February, although
we have decided in the recent staff meeting to make it a one-semester long course (14
weeks) (i.e. shorter), but make it available for the two types of MA programmes we are
offering in ELT (one with a dissertation and the other without).
Denise Özdeniz reports
Since leaving the British Council in 1997 I have not been able to run any teacher training
courses based on EP, but have of course continued to do EP myself. As I now have young
children, I started to work part time in a pre-school and last year carried out a project to see
how far I could involve non-native speaker 5 year olds in EP work, how much feedback and
what sort of feedback I could get from them. I am now embarking on the same project again.
Like many people I am juggling being a mum, housewife, teacher, teacher trainer, wife and
someone interested in her own personal /professional development - therefore a lot of my
data is in diary/field note form and has not been collated very well. This year I hope to publish
what I do and so will try to be morethorough about documenting my EP.
My gut reaction to the question of whether or not you can involve 5 & 6 year olds in EP is that
you can get a lot of feedback from them in pictorial form and in comments they make,
especially to their parents rather than from well formed answers to open ended questions you
ask. For example I use smiley faces, ticking pictures of things you like/ do not like doing,
putting pictorial representations of classroom activities in order of usefulness etc. I especially
watch children's free play. When you see a child being a teacher and using certain methods
or activities with their dolls or friends I feel it is a good indication that they value those
activities.
However, I am very much aware that many children copy what their friends say. During selfesteem building circle time work, when asking why we value on member of the group at least
30% of children repeat whatever was said by the person who spoke before them.
[Editor’s note: Upon my reaction to Denise’s ‘apologetic’ attitude to such fascinating EPguided monitoring of young children’s classroom lives, she authorised me publicise her
‘thoughts’ and also asked me to share her reply to a question that we had raised in Newsletter
1. In her experience, using L1 and pictures plus kinaesthetic activities may also be a way of
doing EP with beginners. Many thanks, Denise, for sharing your thoughtful EP work with
young learners. More of Denise’s contributions below, regarding the possibility of
having/being EP regional representatives.]
Ann Haznedar sees possibilities for future EP work
I have had a fairly major change of direction in my work over the past couple of years. I am no
longer running teacher development groups, but have been acquiring new skills in ceramics
and setting up a small pottery and a library at an international primary school here. I plan to
be doing clay work and library work with the children over the coming year. No doubt I will
need EP skills in these endeavours! Unfortunately, however, it means that I have no EP news
to contribute for the time being.
FROM SHARJA, THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Cindy Gunn reports
I have presented three workshops on Exploratory Practice: one in New Zealand at the
University of Waikato in Jan. 2001, while I was living in New Zealand and two here at the
American University of Sharjah (AUS) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where I am now
working.
The theme for the workshop in New Zealand was "Researching your classroom" was, so my
workshop was aptly called "Utilizing Allwright's Exploratory Practice". In UAE, I presented
“Exploratory Practice: A research technique for teachers” in November at the TESOLArabia
Sharjah Conference and then to my colleagues here at the American University of Sharjah.
I have had one publication which directly refers to EP although the title doesn't actually
represent that. It was, Gunn, C. L. (2000) Helping students take control of their learning
through the use of focused weekly review sheets. The TESOLANZ Journal Vol. 8: 56 – 66.
I am working on two EP articles for publication consideration at the moment. The first is from
my presentation at the TESOL Arabia conference to be included in an edited volume of
papers presented. The second is for the TESOL Professional Development in Language
Education Series.
REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVES
In a recent research group meeting, the possibility of our having regional representatives for
the EP ideas emerged. Since this seemed to be a very attractive notion, Inés Miller thought it
might be a good idea to do a bit of e-mail ‘brainstorming’ with a few EP colleagues in various
parts of the world and to share it in this issue of our Newsletter.
This is what Inés wrote:
I am contacting you and a few other colleagues for us all to think about
what the practice of having ‘regional representatives’ might mean in each
context (reading groups, courses, teacher association activities, for
example). I'm afraid we don't have yet (or should not even have) a very
clear idea of what would be expected; we are really hoping to develop the
ideas collectively.
I believe that your contribution to this thinking would be invaluable since,
based on what we know about your work or about your interest in
Exploratory Practice, I would say that you have been a spontaneous EP
regional representative or may wish to ‘become’ one.
The lively mail interaction that grew out of this ‘brainstorming call’ suggests a picture bustling
with action and enthusiasm.
Within this spirit, we find Hulya Bartu, in Istanbul, Turkey, agreeing that she has “been acting
as a representative and would be also happy to be called that” and Cindy Gunn, now in the
United Arab Emirates, admitting to have definitely “elected herself as an unofficial EP
representative”. Both warmly offered to share their views with anyone interested in EP and
the Centre and to count them on any “virtual discussions”. So, their e-mail addresses to
enable this promising EP contact are barubartu@turk.net and cgunn@aus.ac.ae,
respectively.
Based on the EP News reported from various parts of the world and the reactions to our
editorial ‘brainstorming call’, we can see that those already acting as “regional
representatives” have been engaging in all sorts of activities depending on their personal
professional orientations and affiliations or on the local needs and interests. The range
appears to go from formal conference presentations, publications, seminars and courses to
less formal ways of sharing of ideas with colleagues, professors, students and even friends
and family members.
Colleagues with whom we have, over the years or in more recent contacts, discussed their
intentions of becoming involved in the dissemination of EP ideas have proposed and/or are
willing to become engaged in different practices. Some see themselves as ‘mediators’ of the
material available in print, on the web, or in unpublished manuscript form. Others wish to go
more ‘public’ by finding space in existing professional local contexts or by organising events
or connections that could create new contexts. Recent suggestions indicate the current trend
of playing the mediating role through computer communication (weblinks, chat-groups, etc) as
much as creating long- or short-term connections with institutions (universities, universitiesschools, journals, etc.). Theses ideas have been discussed different times by Cristina Pinto
da Silva (ISCAP, Portugal), Hadara Perpignan (Bar-Ilan University, Tel-Aviv, Israel), Simon
Gieve (Portsmouth University, UK), Cheiron McMahill (Gunma Prefectural Women’s
University, Japan)Lining Yang, China; Pedro Nava (Universita degli Studi di Milano and
Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy), Sara Glaser (Mount Scopus University,
Jerusalem, Israel), just to name a few.
Hadara Perpignan, from Israel, voices a very thoughtful consideration on issues of
dissemination that have already worried some of us in other contexts. She expresses her
concern about the very initial steps to be taken when she says:
The idea of the regional representatives is attractive. I see one problem: there
is NO knowledge of EP around here, which is a pity. I think it would be more
efficient to have an initial thorough presentation by someone really into it and
into the organization and then it could be kept going.
I know exactly which forum such a presentation could be given in: The teacher
training organization here is called CONTACT and at least one editor of their
yearly newsletter has already shown interest in an EP article (Hadara, January
2002).
As to the role to be played by the EPCentre, Hulya sees it, as "serving as more of a recipient
of information from the regions and a linking body enabling smooth communication with the
regions and among them at their own will and initiative, without much EPCentre intervention
unless asked to provide more direct help, support, knowledge, information etc..." This seems
to echo what we have been doing (within our sad time limitations) and, indeed, reflects in an
important way the thinking and intention that underlies our Newsletter editorial decisions.
Hulya also raises the issue of "sponsorhip":
It would be great if this EP initiative can have some sort of financial income to
make itself "sustainable" without having to give in a lot of its basic principles, for
publications, seminars, conferences, research, scholarships etc... I suppose
money has always been what makes the world go round, but it is regrettably
even more necessary in our day and age. Are there any such considerations at
the meetings? (Hulya, December 2001)
This issue has been raised in the past and indeed addressed on several opportunities by
Dick, other members of the EPCentre and the EPGroup in Rio. It is a problematic one for us
in different respects. Although some of us are aware that 'some' financial support may have
been/may still be welcome in the process of developing and expanding EP locally and
globally, Dick's well-founded concern with the dangerously limiting effects of the notion of
'projectisation' has prevailed within the EP enterprise. Notice, however, the appearance of the
notion of 'occasional' funding for dissemination purposes, in Principle 7, in the latest restatement of the EP principles (Allwright, for EPCentre, 2002)
However paradoxically intriguing it may seem, we might say that, in accordance with its
principles, EP has been finding its own way of becoming an indefinitely sustainable form of
professional development thanks to the very lack of institutionalised sponsorship.
Would you, in different parts of the UK and the world, now like to join in the discussion?
Please let us know how you feel about the idea of having regional representatives and what
you think the EPCentre could do about it.
EP THINKING 'IN PROGRESS'
On issues raised in Newsletter 1, 2001
What follows are the issues that we raised in our first Newsletter, followed by some comments
about what thinking we have been able to do in the last six months. We can't claim to have
got very far in finding 'answers', of course, but perhaps the most important thing to say here is
that the new strengthened emphasis on principles, and on working for understanding as key
to quality of life issues, are both looking very promising as a new line of approach.
a) how can we best understand, and then find a way through, the apparent
conflict between on the one hand our interest as academic researcher/teachers
in researching under-performance as an element in classroom behaviour, and
on the other hand our EP-based insistence that it is the participants who should
decide what shall get investigated, not outside researchers like us?
It's difficult to say we have made real concrete progress on this one, but we are beginning to
take comfort in the idea that if we try to follow the principles of EP, especially in their latest
form, then such a problem can be expected to take care of itself, since participants are most
likely, eventually at least, to raise such issues for themselves. And if they do not, this may be
an indication that the issues are not that important to them.
b) how can we best understand the role of EP in the lives of teachers with little
or no interactive element in their normal teaching?
Again we can't claim concrete progress, but we are hopeful that a heightened sense of the
potential of 'monitoring' as well as the new emphasis on understanding the 'quality of life' will
help. We are hoping that the new statement of principles will provide a framework for thinking
that will be helpful in all settings. Time will tell.
c) why do we find it so difficult to convince people that EP and Action Research
really are different, in crucially important ways? (An issue for Dick at APLIUT,
see above.)
We now see this rather differently, I think. Firstly, we do accept the problem and want to
address it directly, perhaps in a 'bolder' paper than the largely descriptive one Dick wrote on
'Three Major Processes of Teacher Education', which covers the ground but rather
discursively. Secondly, we are hopeful that it will be worth trying to use the new statement to
get talking with people directly about the principles, without even making connections in
advance with practitioner research. If this works we may be able to bypass the problem of
making comparisons with Action Research.
d) why do we so easily accept the idea that EP may not be appropriate to
teachers of absolute beginners in a language? Are we falling into the trap of
equating EP with a set of practices, rather than with a set of principles?
(Another issue Dick took up in his APLIUT presentation in June).
Perhaps working directly from the principles will also help here. They would all be worth
discussing with beginning teachers, clearly. It may be possible to see how the principles could
be used, but perhaps we will need to forget the EP practices developed so far and begin
again with new practical ideas. (See Denise Özdeniz' contribution as a suggested answer to
this puzzle in section EP NEWS from Istanbul, Turkey.)
e) why do we worry so much about presenting EP as potentially making a
contribution to classroom method? Is it related to the same issue of
confusing 'practices' and 'principles'?
This is a 'live' issue, since some of us are teaching on 'method' courses and have to decide
what to do about including EP in the syllabus. It prompts the thought that perhaps we ought
not to try to talk about EP at all if it is going to be interpreted as a 'method', but that sounds
unattractively defeatist. Alternatively, we have been trying to imagine again coming in with the
principles, rather than the practices, and then asking people on methods courses to see if
they can see how they might be able to use the principles when making method decisions.
We are very conscious that EP will not in itself offers solutions to method questions, but it
may offer a helpful way of thinking about them. In this connection, see Appendix-EP at
Practicum, PUC-Rio 2001 for Inés Miller's planning and reflections on her attempts to work
with EP in a methods course.
f) and now, in the light of Hulya Bartu's worries from her experiences in
Turkey that getting a 'sense of achievement' is a problem for EP teacher
groups (see the next section of this Newsletter), there is something else
to worry about.
There is much more from Hulya in this second Newsletter, but we can't say we have really
been able to do justice to this particular worry. Our 'philosophical' position is that the process
of working for understanding is potentially, its own reward. So we need to help people get a
sense of achievement out of involvement in a process, rather than out of any 'product' that
may emerge.
g) but the current BIG issue: how can we convince people that EP, even
as a contribution to classroom method, is ultimately more about 'quality
of life' than it is about 'quality of work'?
This is badly worded, because first we have to convince ourselves! We are becoming more
and more confident in the value of this new position though, and finding more and more
unexpected connections with interesting work in other areas - notably in social science
research (eg the work of Yrjö Engeström) and in management science (eg the work at
Lancaster of Frank Blackler and Andy Kennedy). For more on these see section EP NEWS
from Lancaster University.
EP NEW WRITING
Unpublished contributions
This new web page section emerged in the process of editing the present Newsletter. Inés
Miller and Dick Allwright created it as a way of sharing with our readership unpublished pieces
of EP-writing that could stand as contributions to EP-thinking 'in progress'.
In March 2002, it contains
 the text written by the 'multipliers' in the EP Group in Rio for their BRAZ-Tesol
presentation in 2000;
 a letter originally composed by Dick Allwright, in 2001, to encourage 15-18 yearold Malaysian learners to pursue their classroom puzzles;
 a paper produced in Portuguese (but soon to be translated into English) by Maria
Geralda Pereira Lanziotti, in 2001, as part of an MA course taken at PUC-Rio,
Brazil;
 Margit Szestay's (2002) personal understandings of some issues regarding her
identity as an Exploratory Practice teacher and her practitioner research role
during her PhD work.
If more members of the EP community find this idea attractive, the EPCentre could start a
discussion, which with everybody's collaboration, could result in an editorial policy for this
space to be proposed in the near future.
Newly available
1. Dick's plenary talk for the Korean TESOL 2000 conference - "Classroom Language
Learning: public behaviour, private learning" is available on request from us at Lancaster,
electronically if that is convenient to you. It is now also published in The KOTESOL
Proceedings 2000, Casting the Net: Diversity in Language and Learning, pp. 9-20.
2. Dick's plenary for the Edinburgh IALS Symposium 2000: "Exploratory Practice: 'Appropriate
methodology' for language teacher development?" is now available in full draft form, and it is
undergoing last revision stages to be hopefully published in Language Teacher Research.
3. Hulya Bartu, from Turkey, helps us update our records of her own and of her colleagues'
publications and conference presentations:
Bartu, H. (1997) An earlier version of my "Sense of achievement" article was published in
"Networking", issue:3, The British Council Teachers Centres in Turkey, pp. 13-14.
Bartu, H. (1996) "Two Approaches to Teacher Education" in Teacher Training/Teacher
Development: Integration and Diversity, Proceedings of the IATEFL SIG Conference, 6-7
December 1996, School of English Language, Bilkent University, Ankara, pp. 177-182. This is
actually an overview of teacher development approaches where I present EP as one of the
most advanced models.
Hulya Bartu, in Turkey, presented a paper called "What is Puzzling Teachers in Turkey?" at
the Middle East Technical University International ELT Convention, 'Expanding Our Horizons'
(25-27 May 2000), in Ankara, which will be published in the Proceedings soon. This is an
attempt to try to understand all the puzzles produced in Turkey in various seminars,
workshops meetings etc... including the two groups running simultaneously at Bogazici
University, where Hulya was working at the time, and The British Council Istanbul office, and
the workshops Dick organized in two of his workshops here, between the years 1994 and
1997.
Also in Turkey, Denise Özdeniz, a member of our British Council EP group, formerly working
at The British Council, now working for Longman, presented workshop entitled "Exploratory
Teaching: An Uphill Struggle to Professional Development" at the IATEFL SIG Conference,
'Teacher Training and Teacher Development, Integration and Diversity' at Bilkent University,
School of English Language, (6-7 December 1996). This was an interesting workshop, where
she discussed the problems she had while implementing EP in her own courses, but it was
not published in that Proceedings.
Denise Özdeniz and Ann Haznedar, "Training or Development? Can't We Have Both?",
paper presented at IATEFL SIG Conference, 'Teacher Training and Teacher Development,
Integration and Diversity' at Bilkent University, School of English Language, (6-7 December
1996). They mention EP as a useful approach to integrate both. Published in Proceedings.
I also came across two presentation titles at the 2nd IATEFL Balkan ELT Conference held at
the Faculty of Education, Dept. of Foreign Language Education, Bogazici University held
between 5-7 September, 1996. They are:
Haznedar, A. (1996) "Teaching and learning: Poles apart- or two sides of the same coin?"
and
Özdeniz, D. (1996) "Meeting change with Exploratory Teaching- A Turkish perspective"
Dick had also done two things there: a plenary and a workshop. And I had presented a
methodology resume of my just finished PhD work there; "An effort to join research and
pedagogy in a language classroom in Turkey". Unfortunately, the papers of this conference
have not been published in the form of Proceedings.
UPCOMING WRITING
1. Zongjie Wu and Dick Allwright have been engaged in on-going discussions on the
philosophical aspects of EP, which have become more and more prominent in Zongjie's
thesis . We may have to wait for the promised written version of these discussions until
Zongjie completes his PhD thesis writing.
2. Maria Isabel Cunha (with some help from Inés Miller and the EP Group 'multipliers') is
organising all the material that we have collected in our EP work since 1997. The
encouragement came from CAPPLE, where there is word that the Secretaria Muncipal de
Ensino, Rio, may have funding available for a publication. The idea has been to present and
give credit to the Exploratory Practice work done by municipal teachers over the years as a
way of encouraging others to join.
3. Hadara Perpignan, from Israel, is beginning to work on an article based on her PhD thesis,
Teacher-written feedback to language learners: Promoting a dialogue for understanding, (see
mini-abstract in section on EP-Related Research). There appears to be an interest in her
'conclusions' in the realm of "higher Education studies" (academic literacy) in general (not L2).
4. Inés Miller is trying to write (an) article(s) based on her PhD thesis, in which she reflexively
studied her involvement as an Exploratory Practice consultant in two long-term teacherconsultancy encounters (see mini-abstract in section on EP-Related Research). Her close
involvement with the 'new' emphasis on the EP principles and on issues of 'life' and 'work'
within EP might take her to 'revisit' her doctoral work from this perspective.
5. Hulya Bartu also reports on what she is trying to write: I am also in the process now of
going through the much data that I have (audio-recordings, field-notes, diaries, worksheets
etc...) from the 1994-1997 Istanbul experiences that we've had with two groups, so as to
come up with one or more, "serious" (academically- which means I am aiming to write for
"researchers" in the traditional sense) article or articles on the past EP experiences.
I am still at the very initial stages but what is likely to come out seems to be either a
description of "The decision-making process" we had been going through, especially among
the three organizers at The British Council meetings, since we were more or less equally wellequipped with information on EP, to have a say in major decisions, or another topic for such
an academic paper could be rather a pessimists' list of "What not to do in future EP
encounters". It may sometimes be useful to leave aside the "all is well!" attitude and look for
the negative aspects, not to go against EP (i.e. deny its philosophy, principles, practical use
etc…) in any way, but precisely in order to support and implement it properly! (i.e. to play the
devil's advocate).
Why am I writing to "researchers" (only?) Because I think that is something that needs to be
done as well: a topic worth discussing for its own sake some other time.
EP-RELATED RESEARCH
PhD research completed at Lancaster
We are delighted to be able to announce that 2001 saw the completion of Hadara Perpignan's
(Israel) and Inés Miller's (Brazil) PhD theses. This represents another stage of their friendship
and collegial relationship, which started more than twenty years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
They both worked with Dick as their supervisor, had Roz Ivanic as their internal examiner,
and found the principles of Exploratory Practice to be useful in many ways to their research.
We are pleased to share here the full titles of their theses and their mini-abstracts, in which
they emphasise the EP-related aspects of their research.
Perpignan, H. 2001. Teacher-written feedback to language learners: Promoting a dialogue
for understanding. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
The change in title of the dissertation may illustrate how Exploratory Practice was
incorporated as a theory into the story of the research. The working title had been: "Teacherwritten feedback to language learning..." However, as the research progressed, it became
clear that it would not turn up anything much about what had actually been learned through
the feedback, but rather about the nature of the receptivity to the feedback by the learners.
That turned out to be the issue. It is this understanding of an ongoing process including
learning that was made possible by using principles described as Exploratory Practice.
In the writing of the thesis, after the various literatures within qualitative research were
reviewed, a bridge was sought for describing the actual methodological procedures of the
research and the data they yielded. The most obvious bridge was found to be the concept of
EP, as it incorporates both the elements of research and the elements of teaching invested
toward understanding, allowing the teacher-as-researcher to fulfil his/her role most
productively.
[Dick Allwright has commented on Hadara's work that it suggests that it is the relationship
between people that is key, not the accuracy of a particular piece of understanding, or the
effectiveness of a particular teaching or learning strategy... Understanding is probably much
better seen as a social process of infinite delicacy and indefinite duration.]
Miller, I. K. 2001. Researching Teacher Consultancy via Exploratory Practice: A Reflexive
and Socio-Interactional Approach. Unpublished PhD thesis, Lancaster University, United
Kingdom.
I position myself in this study as a practitioner researcher reflexively taking the opportunity of
an academic doctoral research project to investigate possibilities for better understanding
practitioner involvement in practitioner researcher situations. I focus on the development of
two longitudinal Exploratory Practice teacher-consultancy encounters in which I engaged
individually as an EFL consultant with two practising EFL teachers.Within the paradigm of
Exploratory Practice, I worked towards gaining enhanced understandings of my practice by
being involved in it. I pursued my own ongoing puzzles about the very process of developing
Exploratory Practice consultancy as I adopted a client-centred, reflective and confidencebuilding consultancy approach, rather than a knowledge-transmission deficit model of
professional development. Exploratory Practice enabled me to 'exploit' (facilitate and observe)
the teacher-consultancy activities to enhance my practitioner understandings of our
interactionally co-constructed management of the content and, most importantly, of the
teacher-consultancy relationship. Through this 'practitioner researcher auto-ethnography' I
gained enriched yet unfinished understandings of my Exploratory Practice consultancy.
[Dick Allwright comments that Ines' work demonstrates the potential of the thinking behind EP
in contexts beyond the language classroom itself. It also demonstrates how EP can be
successfully combined with more 'traditional' approaches to doctoral research.]
PhD research completed outside Lancaster
As noted in our first Newsletter, Dick has been privileged to examine a number of doctoral
theses recently that have incorporated EP elements explicitly. We include here the full
reference and a mini-abstract of each thesis:
Szesztay, Margit. 2001. Professional development through research: A case study.
University of Exeter, United Kingdom.
The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the way 'insider research' (Elliott, 1991:57) differs
from academic research. It is written from the perspective of a Hungarian teacher educator
whose primary interest lies in her own professional development. I am particularly interested
in the design principles which can make extended research developmental for practitioners in
education. I believe that such design principles become more meaningful in the light of actual
practice. Therefore, I will be looking at the principles of practitioner research in the light of a
case study investigation I carried out into the role of group discussions in English language
teacher education.
Lamie, Judith M. 2001. Influences on the Process of Change: The Impact of In-service
Training on the Attitudes and Practices of Japanese Teachers of English., Unpublished PhD
thesis, The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
This research is an investigation into understanding and change. The thesis examines the
impact of a one-year in-service training programme, designed to support a curriculum
innovation and delivered at the University of Birmingham, on Japanese teachers of English. In
doing so it draws on a number of the principles for Exploratory Practice. In the development of
a Model of Change, arising from the research results, the role of understanding within the
process of change is highlighted. Change and/or understanding are seen to be the key
elements in the process, although not necessarily final outcomes, as through understanding
further development and possibly change (where relevant) may occur. The process,
therefore, is seen as ongoing and interrelated. The questionnaire tools used for the research
have since become an integral part of the programme with the purpose of raising awareness,
and encouraging the teacher to take an active part in personal classroom research, and
thereby increase the likelihood of change and understanding.
Gunn, Cindy L. 2001. Exploring second language communicative competence, Unpublished
PhD thesis, The University of Bath, United Kingdom.
As both the teacher and researcher in my doctoral work, the principles of Exploratory
Practice, specifically integrating research and pedagogy, were the guiding forces of my study.
One of my interests was in the potential of error analysis and reflection, by both the students
themselves and myself as their teacher, to inform pedagogical practice. Exploratory Practice,
with its emphasis on using pedagogic activities instead of standard research tools, rather than
using research tools on top of the pedagogic ones, allowed me to use a classroom technique
that produced a qualitative, rich data set without wasting the students' time. With the help of
Strauss and Corbin's (1998) grounded theory methodology to analyse the data, and to meet
the Exploratory Practice aim of theory-building, I was able to look at what happened in a
communicative event and examine how people show themselves to be communicatively
competent to better understand my puzzle area of the challenges of educating for
communicative competence. Exploratory Practice is also about collegiality and supporting
teachers. My research demonstrates the ability of classroom activities to naturally produce
rich data for research purposes, which I believe would be of interest to other teachers
pondering over whether to engage in teacher - research or not.
PhD research upgraded at Lancaster
We are also delighted to be able to announce that Morag Samson's project has recently been
upgraded from MPhil to PhD status in November 2001. Now again in Nigeria, Morag
continues work on her research project to investigate the support needs of teachers
undertaking Exploratory Practice and the role the employing institution plays in supporting this
type of professional development. Sustainability - what it involves and what it might mean in
this context - is increasingly surfacing as a key concept.
Post-PhD academic work
As a continuation of her recently completed PhD research (Intentions and Interpretations in
the Language Classroom: A Case Study in ELT in a Portuguese Polytechnic, Unpublished
PhD thesis, Lancaster University, UK, 2001), Cristina Pinto da Silva is going to use EP for her
promotion Research Project. Although it is still at a very embryonic stage, this project, which
has to follow a fairly standardised format, entails the planning of a pedagogic unit, to be
presented to an examiner's board. The plan so far is to use the principles of Exploratory
Practice to pursue the teacher's and the learners' puzzles about a commonly-used classroom
activity - groupwork. This proposal may turn out to be suitably controversial, as traditionally
the lesson plan is expected to include a pre-definition of the language content to be taught,
followed by the presentation of 'appropriate' pedagogical activities. We'll keep you posted.