Seven Principles of EP

Why seven principles ?

We need fundamental global principles for general guidance, (eg bringing people together is more fruitful than pushing people apart). We must then work out the implications of these for our everyday local practice (How can we get our students to work together in our particular context?). Thinking about acting locally in a principled way generates more thinking about our global principles, and helps us to develop these. 'Think globally, act locally'

The Principles:

• Put quality of life first
• Work primarily to understand classroom life (cf action research, which aims to solve problems)
• Involve everybody (ie learners are co-researchers)
• Work to bring people together (atmosphere of collegiality)
• Work for mutual development
• Integrate the work for understanding into classroom practice (EP should not be 'parasitic')
• Make the work a continuous enterprise

Find out more about EP

The Exploratory Practice Centre has further information and articles: EP centre home page

A special Issue of Language teaching research 7:2 (June 2003) dedicated to EP has an introductory article by Dick Allwright and several reports of EP projects.

Volume 8: 3 (September 2004) of the same journal has further material.