The methodological elasticity of potentially exploitable pedagogic activities (PEPA) has many practical advantages, enabling practitioners to adapt Exploratory Practice (EP) to their local context, integrate teaching and research, and reduce burnout (Hanks, 2019). However, the lack of a clear methodology or set classroom activities, can make it challenging for students and teachers when first transitioning to EP. Hence, practitioners need to share narratives and techniques (Slimani-Rolls & Kiely, 2018).
This presentation documents how a practitioner enacting EP for the first time uses reflective, co-creative and dialogic PEPA to help students generate and co-explore puzzles. The students are studying compulsory English classes at a Japanese university taught by a British teacher. Students' English level is not high (CEFR A1-A2), suggesting some may have low self-esteem and feel ontologically disengaged from their learning (Matusov, 2011). EP offers an opportunity to mutually engage their desires, stimulate curiosity and reflection, and re-ontologize their language learning (Kato & Hanks, 2021).
These PEPA aim to support quality of life in the classroom by facilitating meaningful engagement. Reflective PEPA stimulate curiosity about language learning by expanding learners' perspectives on language skills and provoking affective responses to learning experiences. Creative-play PEPA involve group playfulness to familiarize students with improvisation and emergence in co-exploration. Dialogic PEPA help students agree on ground rules for group interaction that increase the potential for mutual understanding by emphasizing inclusivity and valuing difference.
The initial aim of this research is not to prove the efficacy of the PEPA, but to understand how participants interpret and use them. Multiperspectival interpretive phenomenological analysis is used to examine the lived experience of participants (Larkin et al. 2019). 'Cases' are construed as student-teacher dyads. Idiographic interpretation of teacher and student learning journals, assignments and post-course interviews is used to identify important points where perspectives converge and diverge. Comparing teacher expectations with students' sense-making of activities enables the practitioner to be reflexive about their practice, improve the activities and find culturally sensitive ways to facilitate reflective co-exploration.
Participants in this presentation will be introduced to a range of innovative PEPA that could be adapted to support their practice. They will also gain insights into inclusive and culturally informed ways to stimulate language learners' curiosity, co-exploration, and quality of life in the classroom.
References
Hanks, J. (2019). From research-as-practice to exploratory practice-as-research in language teaching and beyond. Language teaching, 52, 143-187.
Kato, Y., Hanks, J. (2021). Learner-initiated exploratory practice: revisiting curiosity, ELT Journal.
Larkin, M., Shaw, R., & Flowers, P. (2019). Multiperspectival designs and processes in interpretative phenomenological analysis research, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 16:2, 182-198.
Matusov, E. (2011). Authorial teaching and learning. In E. J. White & M. Peters (Eds.), Bakhtinian pedagogy: Opportunities and challenges for research, policy and practice in education across the globe (pp. 21-46). New York: Peter Lang Publishers.
Slimani-Rolls, A., Kiely, R. (2018). Exploratory Practice for Continuing Professional Development: An Innovative Approach for Language Teachers, London: Palgrave MacMillan.
