A handbook for exploratory action research

This is a practical handbook, written in a non-academic, teacher-friendly style, to show teachers how they can engage in research.

Author
Richard Smith & Paula Rebolledo

The handbook takes teachers through the steps of exploratory action research, an approach to teacher-research for professional development created originally in the context of the British Council Champion Teachers programme for secondary school teachers in Chile and, since then, adopted also in teacher-research schemes in India, Nepal and Peru.

Based on examples from actual experience, including cases from the companion publication Champion Teachers: Stories of Exploratory Action Research (British Council, 2016), the book is unique in the literature on teacher-research in English language teaching (ELT) in being particularly targeted at school teachers working in relatively difficult circumstances.

About the authors

Richard Smith (Reader in ELT & Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, UK) has expertise in the fields of language teaching history; learner and teacher autonomy; teacher-research; ELT research capacity-building; and teaching in difficult circumstances. He has published widely and given invited talks, seminars and workshops in many countries.

Paula Rebolledo has taught at primary, secondary, undergraduate and postgraduate education and on in-service teacher training programmes. Her areas of interest include teaching young learners, teacher education, professional development and teacher-research. She has given talks and workshops in Latin America, Europe and Asia in these areas. She is the co-founder of RICELT (the Network of Chilean researchers in ELT).

See what the book reviewers say:

A highly practical and user-friendly guide that aims to support teachers in conducting exploratory action research (EAR)” By Emily Edwards, lecturer in Academic Language and Learning at the University of Technology Sydney

A Handbook for Exploratory Action Research is exactly what many teachers need to go through to get a clear vision about action research. It demystifies ideas related to classroom research and provides realistic goals.” By Tulika Kakkar, Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Delhi

This publication is free to download in pdf format below.

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