Research and Practice in Applied LinguisticsYou can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.

Judith Hanks is a Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Leeds, UK, where she teaches undergraduates, postgraduates, and supervises doctoral students. Her research interests include investigating the relationship between principles and practices in practitioner research, and the challenges of integrating research and pedagogy in language teaching. 2 Abstract This article critically examines the implementation of Exploratory Practice in anEnglish for Academic Purposes (EAP) context in a British university. The innovation involved challenges as well as opportunities for uniting learning, teaching and research. Particular emphasis is given to two teachers, who are the focus of this article: the story of one, 'Jenny', illustrates the processes of doing Exploratory Practice with learners of EAP, while the story of the other, 'Bella', provides insight into the notion of puzzlement, a central feature of the Exploratory Practice framework. For these practitioners, it was clear that the integration of pedagogy with locally relevant, small-scale research activity, held a wealth of opportunities for language learning and teaching. KeywordsExploratory Practice, integrating research and pedagogy, practitioner research in EAP I IntroductionExploratory Practice (EP) is a form of practitioner research in language education which aims to integrate research, learning and teaching. Developed in the early 1990s (Allwright, 1993;Allwright & Bailey, 1991;Allwright & Lenzuen, 1997), at least partly in response to dissatisfaction with more traditional forms of classroom based research, EP promotes the idea of teachers (and learners) puzzling about their language learning/teaching experiences, using "normal pedagogic practices as investigative tools" (Allwright, 2003, p. 127). This move takes teacher research (Johnson & Golombek, 2002;Stenhouse, 1975), action research (Burns, 2010;Carr & Kemmis 1986), and reflective practice (Edge, 2011;Schön, 1983Schön, , 1987) a step further. By incorporating research into pedagogy, EP seeks to address the issue of the demands of research pulling practitioners away from their teaching and learning responsibilities.This is an account of how two English language teachers made sense of EP; the dilemmas, challenges and opportunities they faced as they tried implementing EP for 3 the first time into their practice. I worked alongside the teachers and learners to investigate the processes of initiating EP in an EAP context taking an EP approach myself. My intention is to take a critical look at the principles and practices of EP, considering the tensions at play when EP is implemented for the first time in a new context. Hence my own questions surface throughout the article, alongside those of the participants, to provide a multidimensional picture of the EP principles in action. II Exploratory Practice: a principled frameworkOver the past two decades, EP has been developed in discussions with teachers from around the world (Allwright, 2003(Allwright, , 2005Hanks, 2009;Slimani-Rolls, 2003Wu, 2004;Zhang, 200...

Practitioner research is a flourishing area with a significant body of theoretical and empirical research, but often researchers remain isolated, unaware of impactful work by colleagues in related fields. Exploratory Practice (EP) is one innovative form, uniting creative pedagogy and research methods. The potential contributions have hitherto been neglected. EP's emphasis on puzzling and understanding is a means of demystifying occluded practices which place learners, teachers and researchers as co-investigators at the heart of the research-practice nexus. EP's radical positioning of learners as co-researchers, alongside teachers, teacher educators and others, means crossing boundaries – (re-)negotiating identities, in language learning/teaching/researching – thus raising epistemological challenges for the field. The contribution of this state-of-the-art article is to provide a meta-analysis of these themes and challenges, critically analysing the complexities involved as the paradigms of research, practice and practitioner research shift from research-as-practice towards practice-as-research.

No abstract

No abstract