A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

C. Assist the teacher find answers in her own context 
before leaping into action
4.5 Your own questions 
In order to come up with your own exploratory questions, 
you can think of questions which (1) explore your own 
perceptions, (2) explore others’ perceptions (in particular, 
students’) and (3) explore behaviour (your students’ and 
also yours!).
1. Exploring your own perceptions is important for 
identifying why a situation is important to you, what 
you understand about it and what you expect, 
particularly if you are unhappy with it. In the case of 
Andrea in Chapter Three, she needed to understand 
what a wrapping up was in order to establish why she 
was dissatisfied with the way she developed this stage 
in her lessons. Consequently, she needed to explore 
her views of an effective wrapping up. 
2. Exploring others’ perceptions is also an important 
focus, since you need to know what your learners
(or sometimes parents, or your colleagues) think
and/or feel in a particular situation in order to fully 
understand it. In 4.4 above, Teresa asked her students 
about their preferences regarding speaking tasks, 
since she felt students were not communicating 
effectively in English in her class – in other words, she 
asked students what they thought of activities in order 
to understand this situation from their perspectives. 
3. By exploring your students’ and also your own 
behaviour, you will get a clear picture of what actually 
happens in the classroom; what you do and what your 
students do. Both Andrea and Teresa had this focus on 
behaviour: Andrea looked at the way her students 
behaved at the end of the lesson and Teresa explored 
what she and her students did to practise speaking.
In this way, both Andrea and Teresa obtained 
important and, in some ways, surprising data about 
what they do, the way they teach and the way their 
students react to their teaching.