Enabling Children’s Voices Through Children-Led Exploratory Practice: Opportunities and Limitations from Teachers’ Perspective

Meifang Zhuo

2024

Summary

Children (all minors under 18 years of age) have been recognized as rights-bearing citizens with voices worth considering, as emphasized in international legislation (e.g., the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). However, as Pinter (2023) points out, most research has been conducted ‘on’ and ‘about’ children, only a few ‘with’ and none ‘by’ children, i.e., a lack of children’s voices in research.

The potential of Exploratory Practice (EP), a form of practitioner research proposed by Allwright and Hanks (2009), for empowering learners in language education has been validated in various contexts (e.g., Kato & Hanks, 2022;). EP highlights inclusive practitioner research, involving teachers, learners, and other stakeholders working collegially to understand what they want to understand, following their own agendas. Therefore, EP usually starts with practitioners’ identifying issues they want to explore, conducting investigation by familiar activities (for example, group work, discussion, storytelling, interviews, brainstorming, tests…), analyzing the data from this investigation, developing understanding concerning the explored issues. Additionally, EP emphasizes the inclusion of EP into normal teaching and learning agendas and thus no extra burden or disruption to normal schedule.

To date, most of EP are led by teachers or adult learners. Therefore, a gap exists in children-led EP to enable children’s voices in language education in literature. This gap is even more prominent in high-stakes educational system in China, particularly in middle schools and high schools. Following an exam-focused and teacher-oriented approach, children’s voices are long missing in the language classrooms. Involving Chinese English teachers in supporting children-led EP will help them develop an awareness of pursuing egalitarianism in the classroom and enable/value children’s voices in the educational context.

Building on my successful experience in supporting Chinese language teachers to conduct EP (Zhuo & Huang, 2024; Zhuo & Tang, 2024) and my passion for empowering children's voices in their educational contexts, this project aims to first aims to investigate Chinese English teachers’ perspective regarding the possibilities and limitations of children-led EP in enabling children's voice in language education, by sharing the concepts of EP and research by children. As such, this project will address the following two questions:

1. From teachers’ perspective, what are the possibilities of using children-led EP to enable children's voices in language education?

2. From teachers’ perspective, what will be the challenges associated with these possibilities, and what might be coping strategies? (e.g., Key issue of gaining school head permissions for an actual EP project)

The findings of this project will have implications for language teachers and language teacher educators across the globe, who value children’s voices in language education, and the wider community interested in pursuing a sociological approach to studying childhood and children in language education, particularly in the context of China.

References

Allwright, D., & Hanks, J. (2009).The developing language learner. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kato, Y., & Hanks, J. (2022). Learner-initiated exploratory practice: revisiting curiosity. ELT Journal,76(4), 421-431.https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccab039

Pinter, A. (2023). Engaging children in applied linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

Zhuo, M. & Huang, J. (2024). Using exploratory practice to teach: An innovative way to explore students' speaking difficulties. TESOL Journal, 15, e746.https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.746

Zhuo, M., & Tang, H. (2024). Understanding Students’ English-Speaking Difficulties: An Exploratory Practice Approach with Web 2.0. RELC Journal, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00336882241253002

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