One teacher researcher recently completed a Ph.D. in education through "practitioner" research; that is, research in her own classroom. This research examined the talk that unfolded between young adolescent students in the course of everyday classroom activities in her English and Pastoral Care classrooms and in the Technology Studies classroom of a colleague teaching the same students. The study focused on hearing students as they talked in groups. It focused particularly on one student to show what may be gained from the close examination of talk between peers, and the further insights generated when the talk is compared with student-teacher talk and with what a situated researcher may have heard on other occasions. Having collected the data "on the inside," the teacher researcher examined it "from the outside," using an ethnomethodological perspective and techniques of conversation analysis to hear her students in new ways. This paper explains how the teacher researcher designed her doctoral research in relation to the tensions she experienced as a teacher conducting research in her own classroom. The paper points out that the dilemmas she faced were practical, ethical, and methodological, and that her solutions were based partly on her prior experiences conducting classroom-based research and partly on solutions generated by other teachers carrying out research in their classrooms. It states that resolving these dilemmas showed her a way in which teacher researchers might draw on their "inside" perspectives without losing the rigor and clarity of thought that can be gained from the application of particular theoretical perspectives and methodological techniques. (Contains 60 references.) (NKA)