schools network in the United States are all examples of how teachers are working together to improve their own pracce. PLAR fits this emerging paern of mul-­‐modal conferences between teachers and learners, with teachers examining crically what works in their own ‘classrooms’. Importantly, this examinaon includes gathering feedback from learners before and post intervenon, using control groups, listening to what learners say and triangulang this with other secondary sources of data.


Challenging dominant discourses


Praconer-­‐researchers’ hunches (the starng point for PLAR) can somemes stand in opposion to dominant discourses in educaon. For example, a researcher in 2015/16 had concerns about the predominance of small group discussion acvies in her ESOL classroom following the work of such educaonalists as Pey (e.g. 2014) and Swan (2005). She had just read a book called ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain (2013) and she felt worried that introvert learners in her classrooms were at a disadvantage during ‘buzz group’ and ‘brainstorming’ tasks. The researcher’s findings correlated with her hunch and, as a result, she now builds in careful thinking me and quiet, reflecve acvies into her courses.


In another example, a research team were worried about providing effecve feedback on maths and English for all learners, following the work of Hae and Timperley (2007) and others. Like many others, their organisaon had begun to insist on wrien maths and English feedback across the whole curriculum and they felt that this could have detrimental effects on (non-­‐maths/English specialist) teachers and on learners. The acon research cycles they carried out focused on gathering teachers’ and learners’ views on the effecveness of their feedback. They found that verbal feedback was oen most effecve and they developed and trialed tools to help ensure that, where wrien feedback was given, it was useful and clearly understood by all.


How do you undertake Praconer-­‐Led Acon Research?


In Scotland, where PLAR is a commonly-­‐used approach in adult and further educaon teacher development, four stages of a PLAR cycle have been idenfied (see hp://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publicaons/2009/12/15095637/16)


1. Planning and preparaon 2. Data collecon 3. Analysis 4. Reporng, disseminang and embedding into pracce


The diagram opposite, taken from the Educaon Scotland ‘PLAR’ website illustrates these stages. It is important to note that the PLAR cycles described above are iterave. In other words, praconers can learn from each cycle in order to undertake the next. An example that illustrates this is the work of a research team at Kirklees College in Huddersfield, who decided to invesgate English and maths marking and then to develop a framework to support tutors in giving feedback. In order to idenfy the most useful framework for their non-­‐ specialist colleagues in the college, they trialed several different versions, each me collecng and analysing data about their effecveness in order to design the next versions to trial in the same way. Their research approaches and findings can be seen in a ‘WordPress’ report they produced as an outcome of their work.


16


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