Wallace Action Research For Language Teachers.pdf: A Comprehensive Introduction to Action Research f

I would like to begin by thanking all the EFL/ESL teachers (bothpractising teachers and would-be teachers) who have worked throughthe materials in this book, and, through their feedback, helped toshape it into its present form. I only hope that the content ofthis book has been at least as helpful to them, as reading theiraction research projects has been rewarding for me. I am gratefulin the first place to my colleagues in Moray House for

Wallace Action Research For Language Teachers.pdf

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approach that will be explored in this book is the one that issometimes called action research, by which I mean the systematiccollection and analysis of data relating to the improvement of someaspect of professional practice. This approach is not for everyone.For one thing, it makes demands

These examplars are intended to achieve a number of aims. Theyshow how the research techniques being described can work out whenimplemented in a specific context. They demonstrate how researchfindings can be reported. They give examples of the kinds ofinteresting results which an action research approach can yield.And I hope, also, that you will find them worth reading in theirown right.

The 'Personal review' sections are intended to give you a chanceto think about the ideas being discussed and to relate them to yourown situation. In many cases this will be done by involving you invarious aspects of the process of action research - in other wordsa kind of 'learning by doing'.

teacher-training, or management of an English department, orwhatever it is you do in ELT). It is done by systematicallycollecting data on your everyday practice and analysing it in orderto come to some decisions about what your future practice shouldbe. This process is essentially \\7hat I mean by the term actiqnresearch. In this first chapter, I am going to try to locate actionresearch within the context of professional development.

How many different strategies did you come up with? Were the sixspaces sufficient, or did you want to list more? There are manypossibilities, of course. You may have listed the membership of aprofessional association as one of your strategies; This has manyof the advantages of informal discussions with colleagues, and inaddition a wider scope for social interaction. Men;:tbership of anassociation mayor may not go along with attendance at conferences.If you listed this, you may have found it difficult to grade, sinceconferences can vary so much in their impact upon one. Departmentalmeetings and membership of working parties can also be verypositive or very frustrating experiences, partly depending on one'srelationships with the colleagues involved!EveninglUJeek-endltwilight (i.e. after school) classes can alsovary widely on their effectiveness and congeniality. Taking up newchallenges, for example by career moves from one post to another,is another way in which many people expand their professionalexpertise. There is also, of course, private reflection: sometimeswe do our best professional thinking while silently driving to orfrom our place of work, ofwhile reading a book on some aspect oflanguage teaching. There is dearly a wide range of possibilities,and as I have already

concerned with areas of our expertise that we feel could beimproved. In my experience, teachers and colleagues in theeducation field generally, are much more conscious of such areasthan they are aware of their strengths. I would like you to imaginethat you wish to become a more effective teacher, inspector,adviser, administrator, project organiser, head of department,teacher-trainer - or whatever. The 'Personal review' section willalso ask you to think of the possible application of actionresearch to these areas of concern.

subsequent analysis of the data we have collected forms the coreof what w ..U .research . There are many other aspects ofresearch, and othyr' 'procedures may also be involved, but thisprocess forms its essence. We sge that, according to thisdefinition, research is a special kind of inqhfry, since not allinquiry is based on data collection and analysis. Some inquiry, forexample, takes the form of pure reasoning from first principles andis especially common in disciplines like mathematics or philosophy.This form of inquiry, or something approximating to it, is alsoquite common in ELT. Many of the influential writings onmethodology of teaching languages have been based, not on dataabout classrooms 0tlanguage learners, but on deductions fromprinciples of what constitutes good language teaching, or what isthe appropriate philosophy for a teaching programme. So, we findthat some national language teaching syllabuses specify that thesyllabus should incorporate moral teaching in a systematic way.Other foreign language programmes contain elements designed tocreate mutual understanding between cultures, because this is feltto be a desirable pedagogic aim. And so on. We have already used inthe previous paragraph the expression

away from; others we might have to live with. However, it is thereceived wisdom of those worJ>ing in caing professions thatmost problems benefit from being aired and discussed in somecontrolled or structured way; and this should also be true ofprofessional problems. It is suggested here that action research isa form of structured reflection. Since action research is the mainconcern of this book, it has been separated and positioned on theleft hand side of Figure 1.2. To simplify the diagram I haveexcluded 'conventional' research from the diagram (see discussionbelow in Section 1.18).

As we saw. in PERSONAL REVIEW 1.4 and the discussion leading upto it, problems/issues give rise to questions. Generating questionsgives us the lead into various possible areas of investigation. Aswe have already noted, action research is therefore a sub-area ofinquiry, which simply means the process of answering questions byusing various kinds of evidence in some kind of reasoned way. Ifyou look again at Figure 1.2 you wi1J see that two kinds ofinquiry

We saw earlier in this chapter that questions can be answered bya process of data collection and analysis (action research), or byother means (e.g. by arguing from general principles or by comingto certain

feed back into the reflective cycle. To take a very simpleexample, when faced with a particular problem, I may go to a moreexperienced teacher and ask his or her advice. I may reflect on theadvice, and then decide to follow it implicitly, modify it, or dosomething else. However since we are mainly interested in actionresearch, we will

action. This is where it differs from other more traditionalkinds of research, which are much more concernd with what isuniersally true, or at least generalisable to other contexts',This..js a loop process, in the sense that the proces can berepeated

To some readers, it may seem that we have come a long way roundto a statement of the obvious. I suspect that for many people,however, the role of action research as an activity for practisingteachers is by no means obvious. It is liely that the attitude ofthe majority of teachers varies between indifferoence and downrighthostility. So it has to be made clear precisely what is beingargued for here. It has been assumed here that it is natural, andappropriate, for

Action research has been proposed as an 'empowering' procedure.0 But, as Widdowson (1993: 267) has pointed out, if it becomesanother top-down requirement, it turns into the reverse: not onlyis it an additional burden upon teachers, but it also creates a newkind of dependency on (non-teaching) 'experts'. Various conditionshave been laid down from time to time as to what constitutes properaction research. Some writers recommend that action research shouldbe

collabortive or team-bsed. Others suggest publication or atleast sharing of the process and results of the investigation insome way. It has also been suggested that the same stringentrequirements of validity, reliability and verification forconventional research should also apply to action research. (Theseterms will be discussed in Chapter 3, which deals with issuesrelating to the collection of data.) If reflection is to be of anyreal value it must be valid (Le. the data

analysis must be relevant and appropriate), However, since theposition being taken in the present book is that action research isprimarily an approach relating to individual or small groupprofessional develop

professional development and conventional research, and for somepractising teachers may well form' a bridge between the two. Theaim, however, is not to turn the teacher. into a researcher, but tohelp him or her to continue to develop as;;ltClher, llsing actionresearch as a tool in this process. . . . If you have identifiedsome problems and you are not clear about the

It is assumed that most language teachers wish to developthemselves professionally on a continuing basis. They have accessto a wide variety of methods of doing this. One method is byreflecting on interesting and/or problematic areas in a structuredway. In this book, we shall be looking at various ways ofstructuring this process of reflection through the systematiccollection and analysis of data. This is what I have called 'actionresearch'. Action research is different from other moreconventional or traditional types of research in that it is veryfocused on individual or small-group professiqnal practice and inot so concerned with making general statements. It is thereforemore 'user-friendly' in that (for example) it may make little or no,use of statistical techniques. The main function of actionresearch is to faciliate the 'reflective cycle', and in this wayprovide an effectiv method for improving professional action.

In this chapter, we will be discussing how you might go aboutselecting and developing a topic on which you want to do someaction research. You should therefore not look upon everything inthis chapter as a prescription of what must be done. Rather it isan indication of what might be done depending on the scope ofproject you are undertaking. Clearly, if you are going to spendonly about ten hours in total on your piece of action research,then five hours spent on planning would be out of proportion. Butif you estimate that you will probably spend one hundred hours intotal, then five hours spent on selecting and developing the topicmight be fairly minimal. 2ff7e9595c