Teachers as practitioners of learning: the lens of exploratory practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we focus on students and teachers as practitioners of learning, a powerful notion seminal to Exploratory Practice, which is a form of practitioner research developed by working to understand local puzzles, by integrating research and regular pedagogic activities, and by emphasizing practitioners’ understandings of the quality of their lives in educational settings. Exploratory Practice conceptualizes students and teachers as learners and puts forward Five Propositions about Learners: Learners are unique individuals who learn and develop best in their own idiosyncratic ways, they are social beings who learn and develop best in a mutually supportive environment, and they are people capable of taking learning seriously, of independent decision-making and of developing as practitioners of learning. We also claim here that teachers, students of all ages, future teachers, teacher educators, and research participants are lifelong learners (Barreto, Miller, and Monteiro 2015; Miller and Cunha 2017). We support this claim by drawing on instances of Exploratory Practice work developed in Brazilian and British language classrooms, teacher education settings, and academic research contexts in which those involved perform their learner identities. In our discussion, we interweave the Five Propositions with the Exploratory Practice principles.