A handbook for Exploratory Action Research

1. Students are very involved in what is going on
2. Students are very active
3. Students are using the vocabulary words of the 
lesson
4. Students and teacher enjoy the class
5. Students were pronouncing words correctly
6. Students’ enjoy classes based on games

---

 Foundations 
| 
12
One teacher we’ve worked with says this very clearly:
“I think when you ‘see’ something wrong in class, you 
should stop, reflect on that issue, collect data, analyse it 
and plan actions according to that purpose.”
(Teresa Ríos)
We will come back to the nature of good information (‘data’) 
later in the book. For the moment, though, let’s consider an 
example which illustrates how a teacher can gather 
information about their teaching in practice. 
1.4 What’s the value of research?
We want to continue to show you the value of collecting 
information, and start to show you the value of doing 
research to understand your practice and possibly to 
change things. We would like to share with you the 
following short story of research which comes from a 
teacher – her name is Teresa Perčić – that Paula worked 
with in Chile. We think it demonstrates well how 
empowering research can be for teachers who engage
in it, as well as how it can show you things you didn’t
know before: 
“The academic manager of the school where I worked 
told me to play classical music in all my classes while 
students were doing a task. I did it and I noticed no 
difference so I stopped. I was told the school’s decision 
was based on research which indicated it aided 
concentration and learning and therefore, I had to do it 
no matter my observations. I was not convinced at all and 
my colleagues and I decided to play classical music but 
other kinds of music as well. 
Then, I learned about classroom research and the idea
of conducting research in my classroom seemed the 
perfect solution to prove to my headmaster that she was 
wrong, so I prepared a series of tasks and different kinds 
of music to play while my students were working. I took 
notes of everything that happened while my students 
worked: their attitudes, their behaviour, etc. I later 
collected their different pieces of work and started
to notice certain differences in their work according to 
the music I played. I also gave them a survey, a simple 
kind of questionnaire for them to give me their opinions. 
Still, I wasn’t convinced they understood my questions. 
Finally, I decided to interview them, so after each activity 
we did with background music, I asked them about how 
they felt, if they had trouble concentrating, if they felt the 
music helped them complete the task and so on. 
After collecting all the evidence and analysing it in detail,
I gave up. It was true, my students learned better and 
concentrated more while listening to classical music.
They told me they felt relaxed and it helped them think, 
even more than if working in silence. On the contrary, 
popular music made them agitated. They said they felt like 
dancing and singing so they could not concentrate on the 
task. I informed the results to my colleagues and I had to 
admit my boss was right. I did not feel I had lost the 
argument at all! I was proud of myself ... I didn’t do what
I was told just because.
I researched it and found answers of my own!!”
(Teresa Perčić)
Even though she had to agree with the headteacher in the 
end, Teresa felt empowered because she was no longer 
just following orders. She felt she was able to make 
informed decisions about her teaching based on something 
she discovered for herself. The story also reinforces the 
point made above that the information you gather can 
reveal things you did not expect – things which contradict 
the everyday signs you had previously been getting. This is 
why teacher-research is different from simply reflecting on 
what you think has happened in the classroom – it can take 
you beyond your everyday experience for you to gain new 
perspectives. 
Now let’s take a closer look at what Teresa did to gather 
more information. 
She had to compare what happened with and without 
music, and what happened with different kinds of music. 
That’s why she ‘prepared a series of tasks and different 
kinds of music to play while my students were working’.
But what kinds of information, did she gather about the 
effect of each kind of music?