10. Metodología
Qué pide la universidad
- Cómo responderás las preguntas: tipo de estudio, población y muestra, técnicas, instrumentos y análisis (inst. 10).
Qué ajustar según la revisión de tu asesor
- Declara el paradigma y por qué no un cuasiexperimento ni un diseño mixto. Ver la escalera en Ruta metodológica.
- Nombra un autor de investigación-acción (Kemmis y McTaggart, Elliott o Latorre) y léelo antes de citarlo.
- Justifica cada técnica frente a un objetivo y agrega cómo verás qué tanto se implementó la intervención (OE2).
- Completa la Matriz de categorización: «autorregulación» se solapa con monitoreo y autoevaluación.
- Declara el uso de IA en esta sección (herramienta, versión y para qué). Ver Declaración de uso de IA.
Tu texto · propuesta original (30 ago 2026)
10.1 Research Approach and Method
This study is organized as a qualitative action research proposal because it seeks to understand and improve a real pedagogical situation in a rural EFL classroom. The methodological design is directly connected to the research problem: ninth-grade students’ limited learner autonomy and their limited use of planning, monitoring, and self-evaluation strategies. Therefore, the study does not separate research from pedagogical action. It uses classroom-based evidence to analyze how students respond to a guided intervention and how they demonstrate autonomy over time.
Cohen et al. (2018) emphasize that educational research designs must be selected according to the nature of the problem, the purpose of the study, and the educational context. This orientation is appropriate here because the proposal does not attempt to test an isolated variable, but to understand a classroom process within a real rural school setting. In this case, the problem requires close interpretation of classroom evidence rather than statistical comparison.
The selected method is qualitative action research. This method is suitable because the study is situated in a real classroom problem and seeks both to understand and improve pedagogical practice. The teacher-researcher is not an external observer who only describes what happens in the classroom; he will be directly involved in characterizing the initial situation, implementing a pedagogical response, observing the process, reflecting on the evidence, and comparing students’ manifestations of learner autonomy. In this sense, research and pedagogical action are connected dimensions of the same inquiry.
10.2 Context and Participants
The research will take place at La Esperanza Rural School, located in San Rafael del Monte, Colombia. This context is relevant because rural EFL classrooms often face structural limitations that affect students’ learning opportunities, including reduced exposure to English outside the classroom, limited technological access, low availability of academic support at home, and strong dependence on teacher guidance during classroom activities. These conditions help explain why learner autonomy becomes a pedagogical need in this setting.
The participant group will consist of all 28 students enrolled in ninth grade at La Esperanza Rural School. Since the intervention will be integrated into their regular EFL lessons, the whole class will participate in the pedagogical process and no internal sample will be selected. However, only information from students whose parents or legal guardians provide informed consent and who provide assent will be included in the research analysis. This distinction allows the teacher to maintain normal classroom participation while protecting the voluntary nature of research involvement.
10.3 Action Research Cycle and Pedagogical Intervention
The research will be developed through one action research cycle lasting four consecutive weeks and organized around diagnosis, planning, implementation, observation, and reflection. Before the intervention, the teacher-researcher will apply the learner autonomy self-assessment checklist and observe a regular EFL activity to characterize students’ initial decisions, learning behaviors, reflections, and dependence on teacher guidance. During the planning stage, the instruments and selected classroom tasks will be prepared. During implementation, the metacognitive strategies will be incorporated into the lessons, while student records and classroom observations are collected. At the end of the cycle, the checklist will be applied again, students will complete a final reflection, and the evidence will be compared across the before, during, and after stages.
The intervention will take place within regular EFL lessons and will not consist of a separate guide, an additional content unit, or a technology-based program. The English content and ordinary classroom tasks will continue according to the grade curriculum. What will change is the way students approach selected tasks: each activity will include a brief moment for planning before the task, monitoring while it is being completed, and self-evaluation after it. The purpose is not to add excessive workload, but to turn ordinary English activities into opportunities for students to make and review decisions about their own learning.
Students will complete an integrated Metacognitive Learning Record in English. In the planning section, they will identify the learning goal, estimate the time required, select strategies and resources, and anticipate possible difficulties. In the monitoring section, they will record progress, problems, emotions, and whether the selected strategy is working or needs to be changed. In the self-evaluation section, they will decide whether the goal was achieved, identify evidence, recognize what worked, and state what should be adjusted in the next task. The language of the record will be brief and accessible so that it supports reflection without becoming a test of extended English writing.
10.4 Data Collection Techniques and Instruments
Three data collection techniques will be used: student self-report, participant observation, and document analysis. Student self-report will provide information about how learners perceive their autonomy and strategy use. Participant observation will document behaviors and decisions that occur during regular lessons. Document analysis will examine the metacognitive records and selected classroom products as evidence of planning, monitoring, self-evaluation, and task completion. These techniques are differentiated from the instruments used to register the information.
The first instrument will be a Learner Autonomy Self-Assessment Checklist applied before and after the intervention. It will include brief frequency statements and short open questions related to setting goals, planning time, selecting strategies, starting tasks, monitoring progress, identifying difficulties, adjusting strategies, seeking help, reviewing work, evaluating achievement, and depending on teacher guidance. The scaled responses will be used descriptively, not to assign formal autonomy levels or conduct inferential statistical analysis. Applying the same core indicators at the beginning and end will make the comparison required by the third specific objective possible.
The second instrument will be the integrated Metacognitive Learning Record described above. It will function both as a pedagogical tool and as a source of research data. As a pedagogical tool, it will guide students through planning, monitoring, and self-evaluation. As a data source, it will show the goals they set, the strategies they choose, the difficulties they recognize, the changes they make, and the judgments they form about goal achievement. Selected regular class products, such as corrected activities, short written tasks, vocabulary work, or reading exercises, will be used only as complementary documentary evidence and not as an independent instrument.
The third instrument will be a Teacher-Researcher Observation Journal containing a structured section and a narrative section. The structured section will use common indicators before, during, and after the intervention, including task initiation, goal awareness, organization of time and materials, strategy selection, monitoring, response to difficulties, purposeful help-seeking, revision, self-evaluation, decision-making, and dependence on teacher guidance. The narrative section will record unexpected situations, interactions, and reflections that cannot be reduced to predetermined indicators.
The use of multiple sources is coherent with the qualitative nature of the study because learner autonomy cannot be understood through a single type of evidence. A student may report greater independence, but that perception must be contrasted with classroom behavior, metacognitive records, and ordinary learning products. Likewise, observation may reveal a decision or difficulty that becomes clearer when compared with the student’s written reflection. The checklist, the metacognitive learning record, the observation journal, and selected class products will therefore be triangulated to examine agreements, differences, and changes across the four-week cycle.
10.5 Instrument Validation
Before implementation, the instruments will be reviewed by experts in English language education and educational research to examine their clarity, relevance, and correspondence with the research question and objectives. They will also be piloted with students who have similar characteristics but are not part of the participating group. The pilot will verify whether the English instructions are understandable, whether the response time is reasonable, and whether the prompts collect information about autonomy rather than merely measuring language proficiency. Necessary adjustments will be completed before the diagnostic stage.
10.6 Data Analysis
The information will be analyzed through thematic analysis and temporal comparison. First, the researcher will read the checklist responses, observation journal, metacognitive records, and selected class products several times to become familiar with the data. Relevant fragments will then be coded using initial categories derived from the framework (planning, monitoring, self-evaluation, learner initiative, decision-making, self-regulation, and teacher dependence) while remaining open to emerging codes. The coded evidence will be organized in a before-during-after matrix for each category. Finally, patterns will be grouped into broader themes and triangulated across student self-report, observed behavior, and documentary evidence. The analysis will interpret how learner autonomy is demonstrated throughout the intervention without claiming experimental causality or statistical generalization.
10.7 Ethical Considerations
Ethical safeguards will include institutional authorization, informed consent from parents or legal guardians, student assent, voluntary participation in the research component, confidentiality, and the use of codes instead of names. Students will be informed that participation or withdrawal will not affect their grades or assess to regular classroom activities. Records will be stored securely and used only for academic purposes. Because the teacher is also the researcher, the analysis will include systematic reflection and triangulation to reduce the risk that classroom expectations determine the interpretation of the evidence.
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🎙️ Reflexión de voz · reflexión #26 · sobre nota-habok2022 · 15:08
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