Greg Gobel: Classroom detectives: A look into informal classroom research

Greg started his talk by claiming that healthy teacher professional development invariably entails teacher engagement in continuous (re)questioning of their own practice. Teachers, he claimed, should never cease to notice their own (and others’) practice:

“There’s nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact” – Sherlock Holmes

Action research is one medium for such developmental practice and the reasons for getting involved in one are multifold:

- to avoid burnout/getting stuck in a rut
- to solve a current classroom problem
- to check the relationship between one’s beliefs about teaching and the related practice
- to get feedback on one’s practice
- to justify one’s teaching choices
- to grow professionally
- to exercise teacher autonomy

Greg reported on the Teaching Quality Project carried out by the British Council Spain, elaborating on some of the documents created for the project. The teachers were invited to choose from a research menu and fill in a planning template, listing the following:
- topic of action research project
- problem
- what’s known so far?
- research questions
- check it (for feasibility)
- implementation
- evidence
- teach/act/reflect

More about the project is available at www.teachingquality.webpaint.com