The Exploratory Practice Centre

Cristiane Figueiredo Ricardo

Cristiane's  Impressions of the 5th Annual Exploratory Practice Event 

Departamento de Letras/Puc-Rio

Curso de Especialização em Língua Inglesa

Issues in Language Learning and Teaching – 2003.1

Aluna: Cristiane Figueiredo Ricardo

Impressions of the 5th Annual Exploratory Practice Event 

        It was a wonderful and enriching experience to take part in the exploratory practice event. I had the opportunity to get to know teachers and students who are developing different kinds of work based on exploratory practice. I was pleasantly surprised by the event for a number of reasons: the interesting and different work being done, the students’ involvement and motivation, the sense of democracy among the participants in the event, and the opportunity to exchange ideas and information with the participants.

        A wide variety of interesting topics were presented in the poster sessions. Since some of the topics were brought up by the students, different questions were formulated, such as: why do teachers assign so much homework? Another aspect that caught my attention was that different methods were used to research the puzzles. 

        Most students seemed very involved with the whole event. I noticed that when there was a group presenting a poster, all of them tried to say something about their work, even though sometimes one of them did most of the talking. Student participation in the round table was also interesting, especially because of their unexpected answers. There was one student who normally participated actively in class but “confessed” to being part of the group of students who misbehaved.  When asked to suggest what could be done in order to motivate better participation on the part of the students who only wanted to misbehave, she smiled and said that nothing could be done. Among the workshops, I chose the Hamlet workshop, and again, students were very motivated to imagine and create the performances that were presented at the end of the session. 

        Almost all English conferences and events leave some time for questions at the end. However, it seems to me that the main purpose of this procedure is to clarify what is first presented rather than to think through together the topic in question. Most of the time the speaker answers the questions, but   ultimately what he is trying to do is to make his point. In other words, I think there is not much room for spontaneity in traditional conferences. In this event, since there was room for the participants to exchange ideas and experiences, ask questions, give suggestions, tell stories, etc, we were actually building something together at that moment, rather than merely taking part in something that was previously planned. There was something new and alive coming out of that meeting and each person was important in the process. Even though we had knowledgeable professors taking part in the event and they said many important things, what was so special about this event for me was what we produced as a group. .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

        I obviously enjoyed the event and am also very optimistic with the exploratory practice concepts. However, I would like to discuss the concept of understanding from what I saw in the posters presented at the event. It makes a lot of sense to me to spend part of the time of our classes in activities prepared for better understanding what goes on inside the classroom. I analyzed some puzzles proposed by the teachers and others presented by the students and their respective results. However, in my opinion, there were a few conclusions that were questionable. I am also critical of my own research that I conducted with my students using exploratory practice. After I had used the pedagogical activity I had prepared, I could identify some problems with it. As a result of this, I cannot claim that all my conclusions are true. I am bringing this up because while I consider the concern for understanding to be extremely important, it also seems relevant to me to consider what kind of understanding we are acquiring. I had the opportunity to discuss this with Dick and he said that anyone involved with research may end up coming to erroneous conclusions, and this does not apply only to exploratory practice. He also pointed out that exploratory practice events should be a great opportunity for participants to reconsider some points since they get to listen to other people’s ideas, information and opinions. According to him, we have a tendency to finish a piece of work, present it and not examine it again. I agree with him for I was really willing to make changes in my research while I was doing it, but once I considered I had finished, I was very reluctant to change anything. It is always difficult to shift from a way of thinking that benefits the goals, the end results, and the performance to one that emphasizes the importance of the actual process, the continuous practice, the constant recreating. These are my first impressions, feelings, thoughts, and observations of exploratory practice that will certainly change as long as I continue to study and practice it.

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Last Updated March 26,2004

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