Champion Teachers Mexico II: Stories of Exploratory Action Research
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This collection presents the research narratives of nine Mexican teachers illustrating their professional journeys to become teacher-researchers. These teachers, along with fourteen others, took part in 2019 in the Champion Teachers Programme, which promotes the professional development of teachers of English as a foreign language by guiding and supporting them in carrying out their own classroom research projects.
This was the second cohort of the programme, following on from the success of the first cohort in 2018-2019. An important development of the Champion Teachers Programme in its second cohort was the inclusion of Mexican mentors. In the first cohort, experienced mentors from Chile supported their Mexican colleagues, but given the experience gained, five teachers were selected due to their personal attributes, dedication, and overall performance in the programme to become mentors for their peers.
The nine stories included in this publication were selected and edited from the narratives teachers wrote at the end of the programme in 2019 . These teachers work in rural, semi-rural and urban elementary and middle schools teaching learners from a range of socio-economic backgrounds in diverse contexts and regions of Mexico
Each of the nine stories is focused on a different issue. Two focus on promoting participation: one through the use of competitive team activities, the other through the use of letter tiles. Two address issues of classroom management: giving instructions so students know what to do, and achieving the right L1/L2 balance with low-level learners. There is a story about learners using rubrics to evaluate their peers, and another related to getting learners to review and reflect. Two stories focus on developing language: one questions the effectiveness of worksheets in teaching vocabulary, and the other seeks to evaluate the use of the teacher’s own videos in presenting vocabulary and grammar. And finally, one story examines the value of culturally based activities with learners who feel little connection to either English or the countries in which it is spoken.