Teacher research : what is in it for teachers and how can teacher educators help?

Abstract

As committee members of IATEFL’s Research SIG, enthusiastically involved in supporting and doing teacher research (henceforth referred to as TR), we have found the recent narrative about the apparent little value of teachers engaging with and in research penned by two prominent ELT writers (Maley, 2016; Ur, 2016) concerning. Both of them concede that there may be some value in research. For instance, Maley (2016) states: It is sometimes argued that the kind of experience of in-depth inquiry derived from carrying out research projects is of value primarily not so much for the quality of the research it produces but rather for the way it helps teachers develop professionally. I would readily concede that this is sometimes, though not inevitably, the case. Most of their argumentation, however, suggests that this is often a futile enterprise. For example, Ur (2016) echoes much of Maley’s argument when she claims: But the problems remain: the sheer amount of research available, the impracticality or irrelevance of much (most?) of it for teachers, the rather academic and somewhat opaque language in which it is often written – and the lack of time, for most teachers, to spend reading.