A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

 Foundations 
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10
Task 1.2 
Think about a recent challenging or unsatisfactory 
experience in your classroom. Go over it in your
mind’s eye. Tell someone about it if you’re not alone.
Then ask yourself (or have someone ask you):
What made it challenging or unsatisfactory? Which aspects 
of it proved problematic? What did you see, hear and feel 
that told you it was so?
Commentary
Teachers experience many challenging situations when 
things don’t work out as we would like them to, but, as with 
successful situations, we don’t usually have the time to sit 
and think about what happened and why. A first step to 
doing this can be to think about what tells you things are
not going according to plan – in other words, the signs of 
lack of success. 
You have now reflected on one successful teaching 
situations from Paula’s experience, one challenging 
situation from Camila’s experience and two from your own. 
We have used these situations to show how, by looking at a 
situation closely, you can identify signs of success or lack
of it so that you come closer to understanding the situation. 
In the next chapter we’ll start to see where you can go from 
here – either expanding on success (as with case 1.1) or 
trying to solve a problem (as with case 1.2). For now, though, 
let’s think a bit more about the signs that come through 
your senses about whether something is or isn’t working 
and how you can collect information to understand different 
situations better.
1.3 The need for information
In the examples you read above, Paula and Camila ‘saw’, 
‘heard’ and ‘felt’ certain things that ‘told’ them something 
was working or wasn’t. In the task, we also asked you to 
focus on what you saw, heard and felt since it is our senses 
which tell us (teachers) what is happening in our classrooms. 
When we ‘feel’ something, we are also using our intuition, 
which is nurtured by years of teaching experience. 
Seeing, hearing and feeling give us what we have called 
signs which tell us whether a particular situation is 
successful or unsatisfactory.