Entrevista com a Professora Inés Miller

What exactly is Exploratory Practice? Inés Kayon de Miller teaches under-graduate and post-graduate courses at the Departamento de Letras, PUC-Rio, Brazil. She has an MA degree in T.E.S.L. from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Lancaster University, UK. As teacher educator and consultant to public and private sector teachers, Inés has been actively involved in developing Exploratory Practice as a way of engaging teacher-learners and in-service teachers in sustainable professional development. She is a core member of the Exploratory Practice Centre (EPCentre) and of the Exploratory Practice Group in Rio (EPGroup-Rio). This article was first published in MindBite the APLIERJ newsletter (2005.2). MB: Although I´ve heard you say that Exploratory Practice is difficult to define, could I ask you to do so for our readers? We've defined Exploratory Practice as “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”. I´d like to highlight that, within Exploratory Practice, not only teachers but also learners become agents of their work for understanding. They can pursue the issues that puzzle them about their classroom lives while they work on their language learning and teaching. Maybe at this point I should explain that `we´ in the context of Exploratory Practice refers to a group of colleagues who have launched the Lancaster-based EPCentre to organize our international enterprise, which started in 1991, with Dick Allwright from Lancaster University, UK, acting as external consultant to the Cultura Inglesa, Rio. The EP core members with whom I have worked quite closely are: Dick Allwright, our mentor of Exploratory Practice; Maria Isabel A. Cunha (Bebel), my closest peer in the development and expansion of Exploratory Practice in Rio; and the growing group of colleagues who have multiplied our work in various institutional contexts in Rio, other parts of Brazil, and Europe (Portugal, Spain, England). MB: So, could we say that Exploratory Practice is a way of researching the classroom? I would say that Exploratory Practice is much more than a way of researching the classroom, it is a way of `being´ in the classroom. In our experience as EPCentre members, we have come to believe that Exploratory Practice sets an atmosphere and a discursive space that opens up opportunities for teachers and learners to address and reflect upon what is happening in their classrooms. We are exploiting the fact that at any point in our lives we all have some level of understanding of the life we are currently living and some degree of puzzlement. By intensifying all these processes, Exploratory Practice offers a way of working that enriches the `quality of life´ inside and, as we have noticed, outside the classroom. MB: What issues have been puzzling teachers and learners? Here are a few examples taken from the hundreds of teachers´ puzzles that have emerged over the past 15 years: Why aren´t we ever happy with our classroom work?, Why do I need my students to like me?, Why is evaluating so difficult?, Why does my responsibility increase while the students´ decreases?, Why are students so embarrassed to participate in oral activities?, Why are students so unmotivated when they have to learn English?, Why can´t I memorize all my students´ names? Some of the puzzles that have been pursued by learners are: Why can´t we understand what the teacher says?, Why don´t we have more English classes?, Why doesn´t the English at school prepare us for the workplace?, Is my study method any good?, Why do we have to respect a teacher?, Why do we have homework?, Why do we have to be tested when the teacher can assess us? As you can see, these are questions that we all have (or have had) about our classroom lives, both as teachers and as students. Our experience has shown that these puzzles arise in different contexts (public and private schools, language classes for various ages, university courses). Another interesting aspect that can be observed from the emerging puzzles is that most of them are about `life´ in classrooms in general and not necessarily only about English classes. Most of our work in our Exploratory Practice groups has been related to language education (English, Spanish, Portuguese), but we have also worked with teachers of other subjects (Arts, Geography, Physical Education.). MB: How have teachers and learners been pursuing their puzzles within Exploratory Practice? We need to emphasize that Exploratory Practice does not recommend definite procedures; it 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. The built-in integration between the people involved in the puzzling situation (teachers, learners, colleagues, coordinators, parents, etc.) and their collective attempt to understand it as they engage in their regular activities enhance qualitatively the nature of the life `lived´ in that classroom. It is this integration between people, work, and understanding that also contributes to continuity. To be a little more specific, exploratory teachers and learners have used any pedagogic actions that make sense to them – walking around the classroom, talking to others, looking and listening more intensively, just to name a few– to `monitor´ what is going on apart from the strictly linguistic monitoring we sometimes restrict ourselves to. They´ve also looked for information to understand their puzzles by adapting their everyday language teaching/learning activities into potentially `exploratory´ pedagogic activities (PEPAs). Some classic PEPAs have been group discussions, role-plays, letter / composition / essay writing, texts / videos related to the focused puzzle, slightly adapted grammar exercises, interviews of colleagues and/or people who could help develop local understandings, among others. An important Exploratory Practice moment also happens when teachers and learners share their understandings in plenary discussions and in poster presentations during the annual Exploratory Practice events, which since 2002 have been held at PUC-Rio and attracted more than 200 participants. MB: How could APLIERJ and other teachers join the activities of the Rio EP Group? In fact, many APLIERJ colleagues and their learners from the public and private sectors are already working with us, but we are looking forward to enlarging our Exploratory Practice community of teachers and learners. So, I do encourage all interested teachers and learners to contact the Rio EP Group at epcentrerio@hotmail.com to find out about our calendar of local activities (EP sessions and/or workshops held at PUC-Rio or at other institutions). I also invite teachers and learners to visit the Exploratory Practice Centre sites, where they can find more information about the ideas and development of Exploratory Practice: December 06 2005