REPORTS FROM RIO

4 October, 2003                                                                                                                          inesmiller@hotmail.com 

EXPLORATORY PRACTICE AT THE CULTURA INGLESA: 

TEN YEARS LATER 

Exploratory Teaching  was ‘born’ at the Cultura Inglesa-Rio in 1991 when Dick Allwright (Lancaster University, UK) ‘discovered’ that CI teachers were working to understand what was going on in their classes. Since this investigative work was integrated with regular pedagogic practice, Exploratory Teaching became Exploratory Practice and has, by this name, developed into a worldwide movement. This interactive plenary will offer opportunities for participants to experience a bit of EP and to reflect on its basic principles as way of understanding what CI teachers and their learners are involved in more that a decade later.    

1. INTRODUCTION TO EXPLORATORY PRACTICE (Plenary) 

In relation to language education, Exploratory Practice is

classroom language teachers and learners

developing their own understandings of life in the language classroom

(while getting on with their learning and teaching),

with a view to enhancing the quality of the  life they lead together,

 and thereby the quality of the education and the learning in that setting. 

Exploratory Practice offers a set of principled guidelines

for the development and use of locally appropriate investigative practices,

and for the general conduct of such work for understanding. 

EPCentre statement, July 2002. 

2. OUR EVERYDAY CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES (Pairs)

3. PUZZLES ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR CLASSROOMS (Pairs)

What strikes you or “puzzles” you about what happens in your classrooms when you engage in the favorite/ familiar activities that you have described to each other? Please try to formulate these questions preferably as “Why” questions.

Please write your questions in the space below.  

Why_______________________________________________________? 

Why________________________________________________________?

Why_________________________________________________________?

Why__________________________________________________________?

4. SOME CORE EP PROCESSES (Plenary) 

• Describing and justifying what we normally do;
• Unearthing and critiquing the underlying beliefs in our practice;
• Bringing puzzling issues of classroom life to consciousness;
• Intensifying our way of looking/listening to what is going on, while it is going on;
• Planning for understanding by adopting potentially exploitable pedagogic activities (PEPAs)

5. SOME EXAMPLES OF TEACHERS’ AND LEARNERS’ PEPAs (Plenary)

(See overleaf) 

6. EXPLOITING OUR FAMILIAR PEDAGOGIC ACTIVITIES (Pairs)

Please pick one of the questions raised by the colleagues in the pair – not necessarily your own – and discuss what you could do or what favorite activity you could adapt that  might lead you to deeper understandings of your chosen question. 

7. EP PRINCIPLES AS A GUIDE TO PROFESSIONAL REFLECTION (Plenary) 

Principle 1: put ‘quality of life’ first.

Principle 2: work primarily to understand language classroom life.  

NB: The above two principles can best be approached by integrating practitioners in the classroom (Principles 3, 4, and 5), by integrating the work for understanding into classroom practice (Principle 6), and by making joint and integrated work generate continuity (Principle 7). 

Principle 3: involve everybody.

Principle 4: work to bring people together.

Principle 5: work also for mutual development.

Principle 6: avoid “burn out” by integrating the work for understanding into classroom practice.

Principle 7: make the work a continuous - not a “projectised”- entrerprise.

8. DICK ALLWRIGHT’S SPECIAL MESSAGE

"The basic principles and practices of Exploratory Practice were 'discovered' in the work of Rio Cultura teachers, and through my work with them, more than a decade ago.  Most of the teachers involved then seemed to have very little confidence that their work was of any interest beyond the Cultura itself.  Now, in 2003, we can see just how important their work was, and just how much has come from it, not only in Brazil but in many parts of the world.  So, I do hope that you will use that example to build your own confidence in developing your own contribution to understanding, and enjoying, life in the language classroom." 

(e-mail communication, 1/10/03)

 9. I, THEN, ENCOURAGE YOU TO

• take any opportunity to share your work with others at the CI or through your Teacher Association;

• join our EP community of practice in “Working for Understanding our Everyday Classroom Lives". 

http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/groups/crile/EPCentre/epcentre.htm 

and/or   epcentrerio@homtail.com