This presentation aims at discussing the gains and challenges of doing practitioner research in the context of EAP and an MA TESOL programme and of involving learners as co-researchers in the process. I will present data from students' reflective writing and drawings, which aim to facilitate the discussion.
In this presentation, I will discuss the gains and challenges of doing practitioner research in the classroom - both in the context of EAP and more recently of an MA TESOL programme, both in higher education in the UK. I will make references to data from three research projects. One of them explored the feasibility of combining learner autonomy and exploratory practice in an EAP course; in the second project, I investigated what is criticality and to what extent my practice developed student criticality in the context of EAP; and in the third project, I investigated to what extent the findings from previous research into criticality are similar to those in the context of an MA TESOL programme, and if there are peculiar signs of criticality in this context, with the aim of developing a framework for criticality development in teaching and learning. Students' reflections on the experience both in writing and via drawing constitute some of the data examined. Alongside my own enquiries, I involved learners into researching their own questions about syllabus content and their lived experiences. These students' explorations happened in class, in dialogue with peers and in a curiosity-arousing intercultural and international learning context. Results of students' explorations and understandings were shared in class very often via poster presentations. This way of working crystalised and made students aware of the constructive nature of knowledge and of their role in constructing knowledge by themselves. Student made meaning of the issues or questions they were exploring by resorting to their previous knowledge, academic sources and peers' perspectives on the matter.
