Practitioner and professional development research

Abstract

Language Teaching Research (LTR) is one of the only top-tier academic journals in the broader field of Applied Linguistics/TESOL that has a long-standing sub-section devoted solely to practitioner research. What makes articles published in this sub-section unique is that they have been authored by teachers or teacher educators conducting research on their own practices, exposing their own puzzles/struggles, trying out alternative ways of being a teacher or teacher educator in their unique professional worlds, and offering insights into how the activity of practitioner research transforms how they think about themselves, their students, and their work. Authors draw on a range of methodological approaches often found under the umbrella term ‘practitioner research’, including action research, exploratory action research, teacher research, exploratory practice, case study, and narrative inquiry. As the editor of this sub-section since 2013, it is my honor to introduce the first special issue of LTR devoted entirely to Practitioner and professional development research. Set within a two-semester instructional unit called Starting language research Mark Wyatt and Carmen Pasamar Marquez trace how they attempt to guide a group of undergraduate applied language students through their initial entree into conducting language research. Grounded in exploratory action research, they draw from their own reflective journal entries and student interview data to articulate an initial ‘puzzle’ of how to make the unit relevant and meaningful to students learning German, French, and Spanish, while also chronicling the various ways in which they supported students as they engaged in collaborative inquiry-based language research. The project enabled them to uncover students’ preconceived notions about language research, assisted them as they explored relevant researchable topics, helped them scaffold a range of practical research activities, supported their attempts to build students’ technical skills of working with language data, and helped them not only evaluate the quality of students’ final projects but highlight the intellectual value of having language students engage in language research. Their project provides insights into how engagement in exploratory action research enabled them to act as productive researchers and learners of teaching while simultaneously enabling their students to act as productive researchers and learners of language. 629508 LTR0010.1177/1362168816629508Language Teaching ResearchEditorial research-article2016