How to do EP
Four steps
Note: these typical steps and are given only as a guide for getting started. They are not intended as a rigid prescription. The principles are more important than the steps.
- THE PUZZLE (cf identification and refinement of a set of research questions)
- Identify a puzzle area
- Refine your thinking about the puzzle area (discuss with colleagues)
- Select a particular topic to focus on
- THE METHOD
- Find appropriate classroom procedures to explore it (eg group work discussion, survey, role-play, diaries, poster session)
- Adapt the classroom procedure to the puzzle you want to explore
- Use the procedure in class ('data collection')
- REFLECTION AND INTERPRETATION
- IMPLICATIONS
- Decide on implications and plan accordingly
Adapted from Allwright, D, Developing principles for practitioner research: the case of exploratory practice. Paper presented for AAAL colloquium, Portland, Oregon, May 2004
The dual processes of EP
(note: the two sets of processes given here are inter-related and often concurrent; a chronological sequence is not intended by the order in which they are presented).
- Taking action for understanding: this focuses on the processes themselves
- Bringing puzzling issues of classroom life to consciousness
- Thinking 'harder' with other practitioners (peers and/or co-participants) inside and/or outside the classroom
- Looking/listening - attending more intensively to what is going on, as it is going on
- Planning for understanding by adopting familiar pedagogic procedures to help develop participant understanding
- Working with emerging understanding: focus is on the content of the process
- Reflexively expressing and appraising personal/collective insights
- Unpicking and refining common notions of 'change'
- Discussing potential personal or collective moves
- Sharing personal understanding of processes as a way of supporting others and of inviting others to join the EP community of practice
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