Section 7 - Second Language Teacher Development Through Research and Practice

Summary

In this last section the focus is on strategies teachers can use to explore their own teaching practices as well as develop their own understandings of teaching as part of their long term professional development.

In the first discussion (Chapter 28), McKay begins with a broad focus on classroom inquiry. She surveys the nature of classroom research in teacher education and its potential for language teachers. She offers a useful overview of the different assumptions and procedures used in quantitative and qualitative approaches to classroom research and raises some of the issues that can usefully be explored in relation to second language teaching and learning. She also highlights some of the challenges teacher educators sometimes face when introducing classroom research to novice teachers.

In the Chapter 29, Burns examines one widely advocated strategy for reflective practice – action research – comparing it with other inquiry-based approaches. What distinguishes action research from some other approaches is its emphasis on intervention (the action in action research) as a way of trying to bring about improvement or change. Such intervention often takes the form of collaboration between researchers and classroom teachers. However, Burns points out that successful implementation of action research is often dependent upon training in the procedures it makes use of (e.g., classroom observation, discourse analysis, research writing) as well as institutional support. She sees earlier models of action research, that were typically focussed on problem-solving, giving way to action research viewed as membership of a “community of inquiry,” one that provides an opportunity for teachers and researchers to collaborate in the shared exploration and understanding of teaching and learning.

In the final overview in the book (Chapter 30), Burton explores the concept of reflective practice as one approach to investigating teaching, and which, like other strategies described in this section, seeks to find ways of linking theory and practice through an exploration of classroom processes. She shows how teacher educators have developed the notion of reflective practice, beyond Dewey and Schön’s earlier conceptualizations of it, and isolates three central questions that reflective practices seek to answer, namely: What do I do? How do I do it? and What does this mean for me and those I work with and for? Burton discusses a number of reflective practices such as collaborative inquiry groups, stimulated recall, written narratives, journal writing, and action research.