This study reports on a meta-puzzling process of Exploratory Practice (EP) focusing on puzzles. In this case study, undergraduate students explored their own puzzles framed with ‘Why’, ‘How’ and ‘What’ and they compared, in collaboration with their teacher, the three forms of puzzles in terms of their engagement in EP.
Exploratory Practice (EP) is an innovative branch of fully inclusive practitioner research (FIPR) which brings everybody together for better understanding of classroom life. This process of knowledge co-production should allow us to create new epistemologies and cultural dynamics in research and pedagogy. The present study specifically reports on a meta-puzzling process of EP with a focus on its key concept: puzzles as 'why' questions. 'Puzzle(ment)' can be defined in contrast with 'problem' (Hanks, 2017, p. 125); whereas 'problems' are essentially negative things that we would like to eliminate by seeking quick and easy answers to solve them, 'puzzle(ment)' can be an exploration of the positive uncertainty of things that we are willing to investigate. Although EP practitioners have insisted that puzzles work best when they are framed with not 'How/What' but 'Why', there is still a lack of empirical evidence to support the insistence. While Hanks (1998) thoroughly addressed the issue from teacher perspectives, we have not been informed of how language learners, or key developing practitioners (Allwright & Hanks, 2009), perceive the difference between puzzles and problems as well as the three forms of questions. In this on-going study, undergraduate students in Japan explored their own puzzles framed with 'Why', 'How' and 'What' and they compared, in collaboration with their teacher, the three forms of questions in terms of their engagement in EP based on a collection of data including puzzles, EP posters, questionnaire and interview results. Preliminary findings of the study will be shared with the audience. Given that any research begins with a question, whether formed with 'Why', 'How' or 'What', implications of this study can be expanded to research as a whole as well as other frameworks of FIPR.
Allwright, D. & Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner: An introduction to Exploratory Practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hanks, J. (1998). "The thing that puzzled me was…" Implications of teacher perspectives on 'problems' and 'puzzles' for Exploratory Practice. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Lancaster University.
Hanks, J. (2017). Exploratory Practice in language teaching: Puzzling about principles and practices. Palgrave Macmillan.
