This article focuses on student activity and how students experience learning. A teaching programme was both led and researched by the one teacher. The article describes a master's level teaching programme and presents the data collection strategies used by the teacher-researcher and presents learning viewed from the students' perspective. The teaching and researching processes are carried out in the framework of socio-cultural theory. In Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories, as part of the socio-cultural tradition, language and dialogue are viewed as decisive factors in learning and understanding, and hence in the researched teaching programme.