Two EAP lecturers from Regent's University London conducted research on Exploratory Practice (EP) in their teaching over two years. EP focuses on identifying puzzles or phenomena in teaching and learning through classroom activities called Potentially Exploitable Pedagogic Activities (PEPAs). The lecturers used PEPAs like discussions of research articles to explore puzzles around student feedback and participation. This helped develop students as co-researchers and transformed their teaching by boosting understanding and quality of life in the classroom.

1. TESOL FRANCE 2016:
Teacher-researcher journeys in EP:
puzzles & PEPAs
EAP Lecturers – Marianna Goral & Chris Banister
Regent’s University London
(teachermatch.org, 2015)

2. Overview
• Learning, teaching, research context
• Motivation
• Key principles of Exploratory Practice
(EP)
• Puzzles and Potentially Exploitable
Pedagogic Activities (PEPAs)
• Conclusion: benefits and
transformations of EP

3. WHY?
(antlantablackstar.com, 2012)

4. Learning, teaching and research context:
• 2014-2016 Language Teacher Research (LTR) Project at Regent’s Institute of
Languages and Culture
• Collaborative: Lecturers/Teachers of English, Italian, French and Spanish
• Our background: Marianna: 16 years of ELT in Poland and the UK, Cross over to
Academia 7 years ago. Currently a Senior EAP Lecturer. Chris: EAP Lecturer with
19 years of ELT experience (Turkey and the UK)
• Learners: Undergraduate exchange students, Business English at Upper Int
(ENG5A1) & Advanced (ENG6A1)
• Module: 3 hrs p/w, student-led and generated components, blended aspects.

5. Motivation
Personal reasons for participation:
• A chance to truly explore and reflect on some issues
that have come up in our classes over the years
• Pursuing our own personal and Continuous Professional
Development (CPD)
• Confidence and reassurance - guided and collaborative
project
Institute’s reasons:
• To encourage more language teaching staff to become
engaged with research: ‘the university is aiming for a
‘student-centred approach where Regent’s is a teaching
focused institution but research-informed and engaged.’

6. Key Principles of Exploratory Practice
1. ‘Quality of life’ first for language teachers and learners
2. work primarily ‘to understand’ classroom life prior to bringing any
change
3. ‘Involve everybody’ in the work for understanding
4. The work needs to serve to bring teachers and learners together
(collegiality)
5. The work needs to be conducted in the spirit of mutual development
(inclusivity)
6. Integrate the work for understanding into classroom practice (use of
normal pedagogic activities as investigative approaches). Teaching
getting done at the same time as research.
7. Make working for understanding a continuous enterprise (sustainability)
(Allwright, 2003)

7. Puzzles
EP centres around teaching and learning ‘puzzles’ (= counter-
intuitive phenomena)
Marianna
Why can student presentations and discussion boards work well?
Chris
Why don't I get meaningful feedback and evaluation of the
learning experience from students?

8. What would be your puzzle?
Write them down on a post-it
(freecoloringpages.c.uk, 2015)

9. Approaching the puzzle
Research tools:
• Lesson videos
• Peer observations
• Personal reflection
• Discussions with other LTR members/project leader and students,
focus groups
• Potentially Exploitable Pedagogic Activities (PEPAs) (Allwright and
Hanks 2009; Hanks 2015): Familiar, non-disruptive classroom
activities-teaching getting done at the same time as research.
• Initially: surveys, questionnaires=relatively straightforward, Later:
greater creativity e.g. Review Collage (Banister 2016)
• Driven by EP principle of adopting learners as co-researchers

10. PEPA 1: Converting research into a
classroom activity
Background and aims
• Inspiration: Rowland (2011):
conversion/integration of
language learning research
into classroom activities
• Comparison of student
experiences with research
findings/recommendations
• Familiar ELT frame: reading
into discussion
• Vocabulary, online
discussion boards, obtaining
learner feedback in HE (Adapted from Williams and Brennan 2004)

11. PEPA 1: Converting research into a
classroom activity
Extract Discussion Questions
• Which of the above points do you
agree with? Why/not?
(explanation, knowledge, personal
experience, etc.)
• Can you think of any other
potential advantages and
disadvantages of these ways of
collecting student feedback?
• Do you like being asked your
opinion? Why/not?
• Which mechanisms do you
personally prefer? Why?
• Do you always tell the truth when
asked for feedback/evaluations by
teachers or institutions? Why/not?

12. Understanding
• Level of learner insights=a critical moment: sowed the seeds in my mind
of learners as true co-researchers
Advantages
• Marrying of research and pedagogy: motivating, especially in an HE
context, but need to provide background, i.e. outline the LTR project and
puzzle
• Treated as a regular classroom speaking activity-e.g. delayed feedback
given on language use, students “reap the double benefit” (Rowland 2011:
258)
• Written follow-up: obtains permanent data for analysis, opportunity to
display/expose students to alternative vantage points
• Leveraging our privileged position
• Playing to strengths as a teacher-researchers
• Room for teacher creativity through familiar techniques and steps (e.g.
text sourcing, discussion questions, whole class feedback)

13. PEPA 2: Converting research into a
classroom activity
• Students not contributing to the
discussion board: ‘Why?’
• Inspired by Chris’ activity
• Inspired by Sutherland-Smith
(2002) article on ‘Student
Evaluation of Discussion
Formats’
• Comparing student experience
with Sutherland-Smith’s
research.
• Awareness of classroom time
required and overload.
‘Teaching getting done at the
same time as research’
Extract from Sutherland-Smith 2002
journal article.

14. Incorporation of:
• Reading and in-class discussion
• Self-reflection
• Students asking themselves the
question ‘Why?’
• Understanding/recommendations
– obtaining data for
analysis/reflection

15. Considerations for the latest phase
2016 -
• Build on new conceptions of learner-
practitioner (co-researcher)
• Focus on learner puzzles alongside teacher
puzzles
• Further opportunities for creativity and
collaboration
• Ethical aspects: using regular and familiar
classroom activities, not imposing too heavy a
load on teachers or students

16. PEPA 3: Preparing the ground for exploration of
learner puzzles (Upper-Int Level)
• Finding a connection/relevance
between classroom research
and Business English module
• Informed students about my
research via in–class poster
presentation
• Inspired by Hulse’s (2016) ‘The
why of the World’ article
• Reading and Listening (TedTalk)
comprehension
• Encouraging students to make
connection
• Questions to stimulate
discussion
• Self-reflection
• Students exploring their own
puzzles

17. PEPA 4: Preparing the ground for exploration of
learner puzzles (Advanced Level)
• Build on Marianna’s ‘find’
• Differentiate for the level
• Second text: an open letter
(Allwright and Hanks 2009)
• Jigsaw reading: share info
from the two texts, identify
common theme: deeper
exploration and understanding
via ‘why’
• Facilitated: exploration of
learner puzzles
• Currently making progress
with learner puzzles alongside
my teacher puzzle

18. All about the PEPAs!
• A nexus of research, learning, teaching-
content (e.g. business) and language (e.g.
business English)
• The positive ripple effect of collaboration and
collegiality
• Getting research done locally at the same time
as teaching and learning for the benefit of all

19. Conclusion: benefits and
transformations of EP
• Boosts teacher self-efficacy beliefs (Wyatt and Dikilitas
2015) regarding their practice
• Transformative for the teaching-research relationship.
Classroom events become a “legitimate source of research
knowledge about teaching and learning” (Borg 2010:418)
• Brings participants together, “collegially supportive
environment” (Slimani-Rolls and Kiely 2014:433) by
foregrounding improvements to classroom quality of life
and fostering creativity (Hanks 2016)
• CPD benefits: confidence to give papers, workshops,
submit articles, access to research/teacher research
communities of practice

20. The Regent’s EP group
Forthcoming book (Palgrave 2017) based on the
LTR project: full details of how teachers explored
their puzzles and gained understanding that
boosted classroom quality of life
Feel free to get in touch:
goralm@regents.ac.uk
banisterc@regents.ac.uk
costantinoa@regents.ac.uk

21. A final thought…
For the puzzle(s) you identified earlier:
• what kind of PEPAs might you want to use?
• Do you have any potential materials/resources
in mind?

22. Thank you and questions
Thank you very much for listening.
?

23. Reference:
Allwright, D. (2005) ‘Developing Principles for Practitioner Research: The Case of Exploratory Practice.’ The Modern Language Journal, 89 (3): 353-366.
Allwright, D. and Hanks, J. (2009) The developing language learner: an introduction to exploratory practice. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Banister, C. (2016) Review Collage, English Teaching Professional, 105, July 2016: 38-39.
Borg, S.(2010) ‘Language teacher research engagement.’ Language Teaching Research, 43 (4): 391-429.
Hanks, J. (2015) ‘Language Teachers Making sense of Exploratory Practice.’ Language Teaching Research, Jan 2015: 1-22.
Hanks, J. (2016) ‘ “Why Exporatory Practice?’”A collaborative report.’ ELT Research 31 Feb 2016 IATEFL Research SIG (resig.iatefl.org.)Available at: http://HYPERLINK "http://resig.weebly.com/issue-
31.html"resig.weebly.com/issue-31.html [Accessed on 17th May 2016].
Hulse, T (2016). The Why of the World. Business Life. Available at: http://businesslife.ba.com/Ideas/Features/The-why-of-the-world.html [Accessed 27/09/2016]
Rowland, L. (2011) ‘Lessons about learning: Comparing learner experiences with language research.’ Language Teaching Research, 15 (2): 245-267.
Slimani-Rolls, A. and Kiely, R. (2014) ‘We are the change that we seek’: developing teachers’ understanding of their classroom practice.’ Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51 (4): 425-
435.
Sutherland-Smith, W. (2002) ‘Integrating Online Discussion in an Australian Intensive Language Course’. TESOL Journal, 11(3): 31-35.
Williams, R. and Brennan, J. (2004) 'Collecting and using student feedback: A guide to good practice.' Open Research Online. [PDF] Available at:
http://oro.open.ac.uk/11875/1/Collecting_and_using_student_feedback_a_guide_to_good_practice.pdf [Accessed 20 Feb 2016].
Wyatt, M. and Dikiltas, K. (2015) ‘English language teachers becoming more efficacious through research engagement at their Turkish university.’ Educational Action Research, DOI:
10.1080./09650792.2015.1076731 [Accessed 7 July 2016].
Images:
Atlantablackstar.com (2012) Image of teacher at desk. [Online image]. Available at: http://atlantablackstar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/frustrated_teacher2.jpg [Accessed 15/11/2016]
Freecoloringpages.co.uk (2015?) Image of puzzle piece. [Online image]. Available at: http://freecoloringpages.co.uk/?q=puzzle+pieces [Accessed 12/04/2015]
Teachermatch.org (2015) Image of wordle. [Online image]. Available at: https://www.teachermatch.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bigstock-Research-Word-Shows-Gathering-98225042.jpg
[Accessed 15/11/2016]