The (ir)relevance of academic research for the language teacher

The Identity Crisis in Language Motivation Research

“…The sheer volume of academic research published almost daily dwarfs the modest contribution this research has made to date, raising the question of whether research into language teaching should now be considered overrated. Not surprisingly, some have gone as far as to describe academic researchers as “mere extras in the language-teaching operation” (Medgyes, 2017, p. 494) and their role as “parasitical” (p. 496), and thus mostly failing to meet the ethical obligations that researchers ought to uphold when working in collaboration with their teacher partners (De Costa, 2015; De Costa et al, 2020). Some progressive language teaching approaches, like Dogme (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009), hardly make an attempt to forge connections with language learning research.…”

Extending the Reach of Research: Introducing Open Accessible Summaries at Language Learning

“…First, although they are unable to communicate the full nuance of each study's content (e.g., in terms of theory, methods, analysis, and findings), the accessible summaries strive to capture the essence of the problem that the research addressed, the study's basic design and methods, key findings, and one or two points for further reflection, such as the study's limitations or follow‐up questions that the findings of research pose. Another key concern raised in research focusing on instructed language learning and across disciplines with relevance to “real world problems” (Brumfit, ) is that, even when short summaries of findings are available, readers are unable to ascertain the validity of research findings, including their relevance to readers’ own context (Medgyes, ; Ortega, ). Therefore, accessible summaries include contextual detail such as participants’ demographic information and data elicitation methods and materials, in order to help readers to ascertain relevance (for more details about the structure, content, and style of the summaries, see https://oasis-database.org/help).…”

Teacher-research: Agency of Practical Knowledge and Professional Development

“…Teacher research (TR) or teacher inquiry takes many forms and serves a range of purposes, but it is conducted by teachers, individually or collaboratively, with the main purpose of understanding teaching and learning in context and from the perspectives of those who interact with one another daily in the classroom (Miller & Shinas, 2019). TR, which is also described as teacher inquiry (Dana & Yendol-Silva, 2003;Stremmel, 2007), action research (Schutz & Hoffman, 2017;Vaughan & Burnaford, 2016), classroom research (Medgyes, 2017) and practice-based inquiry (Walton & Rusznyak, 2016), is designed by practitioners to seek practical solutions to issues and problems in their professional lives (Miller & Shinas, 2019;Stremmel, 2007;Stringer, 2007). (For the purposes of this paper, these words will be interchangeably used to indicate teachers' systematic study of their own practice).…”

“…This inquiry is also a journey from difficulties to problem-solving and empowerment when novice teachers develop increasing levels of professional expertise and ability to reflect on and improve their instruction (Cochran-Smith, 2012). In this research, teachers are researchers who are able to self-analyze their work and share their knowledge and experience with fellow teachers (Medgyes, 2017). The students in this research are not treated as subjects but as co-researchers, and their multiple voices and perspectives are included for interpretations (Alexakos, 2015).…”