Category: professional development

Exploratory Practice – an essential aspect of research-mindedness but is it research?

I recently attended the first AGM of the BALEAP teacher Education in EAP Special Interest Group (TEdinEAP SIG) which showcased the considerable professional development activity the SIG has undertaken since its establishment just over a year ago. The meeting then broke into smaller groupings to discuss an article on Exploratory Practice (EP) by Judith Hanks (Hanks, 2017), who had given a talk to the SIG in December. I’ve been aware of EP since its early inception when Judith Hanks presented a session in the first Research training Event Series for BALEAP. I think EP is an excellent way to engage students’ curiosity about their language learning, increasing their motivation by involving them in choices about the content of the language curriculum (Bond, 2017). It has proven value as a means of engaging teachers in scholarship activity to explore the principles underlying their practice.  I am less convinced by the labelling of Exploratory Practice as research. You could argue that labelling doesn’t matter but I think difficulties arise if students enter their discipline studies assuming that ‘research’ they did in their language class will be similar to research in their discipline.

Retrieved online from https://mythologian.net/ouroboros-symbol-of-infinity/

Exploratory Practice has the potential to encourage deep reflection around language learning but how easily does it transfer to other kinds of research activity? Hanks (2017) refers to EP as research without ever defining that term so it is worth looking at the definition from the Higher Education Funding Council for the first Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to be carried out in UK universities:

Research for the purpose of the RAE is to be understood as original investigation undertaken in order to gain knowledge and understanding. It includes work of direct relevance to the needs of commerce and industry as well as to the public and voluntary sectors; and the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances and artefacts including design, where these lead to substantially improved insights. It excludes routine testing and analysis of materials as well as the development of teaching materials that do not embody original research (HEFC, 1998)

I don’t believe EP as it is presented in Hanks (2017) or Bond (2017) would meet this definition for the students involved in the activity. The emphasis is on ‘original investigation’ leading to ‘substantially improved insights’ in knowledge and understanding – not just for the individual student or teacher but for a discipline. Bond (2017) claims that EP ‘moves students towards an understanding of what a research-led pedagogy might look like’ but if students plan to study Health Sciences, Business Administration or STEM subjects, they need to differentiate exploration of puzzles in language learning & teaching from puzzles in the social and physical sciences and the methods for exploring them. Although EP encourages an orientation towards research-mindedness It is not clear to me how students might transfer their EP activity to research in their disciplines.

It seems to me that there are different levels of exploratory activity, which could be given different labels:

  • finding out what I don’t know = learning
  • finding out what people around me think = journalism
  • finding out about reasons for puzzles in my practice = scholarship
  • careful systematic documented data gathering whose innovative conclusions could be challenged publicly = research

I argued in a previous post that teachers need to read research and I believe EP to be an excellent means of encouraging this. For example, as one of the participants in the SIG discussion suggested, EP could be used on a Pre-sessional course to encourage teacher professional development. Teachers could be encouraged to share puzzles about their EAP teaching and then gather data about different teaching practices through peer observation. They could carry out a quick survey of teaching literature to find out if anyone had published about their puzzle. For me this step is crucial because, if it is missing, teachers can never escape their own context to discover different practices in other contexts. They end up in a self-reflective loop, eating their own tail. Teachers could then present their own findings in comparison with the literature to understand their puzzle more deeply.

Bond, B. (2017). Co-constructing the curriculum through Exploratory Practice. The Language Scholar Journal. University of Leeds.

Hanks, J (2017). Integrating research and pedagogy: an Exploratory Practice approach. System, 68. pp. 38-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.06.012

Higher Education Funding Council (1998). Research Assessment Exercise 2001: Key Decisions and Issues for Further Consultation, Guidance Note ref. RAE 1/98, HEFC.

How NOT to get published in an academic journal

Some things to consider when attempting to publish your research

I’ve been a peer reviewer for articles submitted to the Journal of EAP (JEAP) for a number of years now and in the past year, I’ve collaborated with Sarah Brewer, current Chair of BALEAP, as guest editor of a special issue to celebrate 50 years of BALEAP and 21 years of JEAP. Reviewing articles can be frustrating work because authors who submit them don’t seem to understand how to tailor their submission to the requirements of the journal editors and its readers. They write for themselves and not for an academic audience. Below I’ll list some of the issues I’ve had with article submissions:

‘I’ll just submit and get some feedback’ – this is extremely unkind to journal reviewers who do their work voluntarily and usually have to fit reviewing around their busy day jobs. JEAP wants to encourage new researchers to publish, and has established a Researching EAP Practice strand as a stepping stone to more rigorous studies with larger datasets. However, submitting a draft you think isn’t publishable just to get feedback is impolite. The journal reviewer is not like a supervisor. Their feedback is intended to bring your work to publishable standard but they have to see that the potential already exists in your draft.   

Photo by Eva Darron on Unsplash

‘My supervisor wants me to publish my PhD research in an academic journal’ – this leads to a confusion of genres. My friend and co-author Jenifer Spencer has a nice metaphor for the difference between PhD theses and academic articles. Both are like a journey but a PhD is a train journey: plenty of time to look out the window and take in different aspects of the view along the way. Academic articles are like plane journeys, focused on the destination. The researcher has to select only the most innovative findings that make a contribution to an ongoing research conversation in the journal. There is not space in an article to include detailed literature reviews or methodology sections or all the results found in a PhD thesis. Instead the purpose of these sections is to provide evidence that there is a gap in the research field and that the study has been carried out rigorously.

Following on from this lack of understanding of the requirements of the article research genre, I’ve reviewed submissions that the author labels as ‘essay’, essentially a review of literature relating to a topic. This is not a genre that you would find in a research journal and perhaps it is worth exploring why. An essay (derived from essai in French) is a test, a learning genre. Essays are set to enable students to show what they know about particular aspects of an academic subject. The questions posed are convergent as there is an expected yes/no answer. The answer may lie along a scale, to what extent yes/no, but it comes to a closed conclusion. Literature reviews in research articles in contrast are divergent. They establish what is not yet known, which the researcher hopes to explore. The conclusion will not be closed but open, providing innovative insights that lead to the need for further research. The conclusion to an essay gives the author’s viewpoint on a closed question. The conclusion to a research article gives the authors claim to new knowledge, which moves understanding forward. It is true that many research journals publish reviews of the literature that can look like essays. However, these are usually commissioned from active and established members of the research community, not new authors, and they are also divergent, opening up avenues for further research.

As well as a lack of understanding of the appropriate research genres, new researchers sometimes fail to establish a conversation with the journal they are submitting to. They may have been turned down by their original choice of journal and simply submit their article unchanged to another one. If this practice were employed in applying for a job, it would mean submitting a generic CV without tailoring it to the particular position you are targeting, usually resulting in a failure to get the job. The editors want to see authors contributing to a research conversation in their journal so it is important to analyze what has already been published in the journal in your area and show how your research keeps that conversation going.

Finally, new authors often treat their audience as a teacher or supervisor because that is who they are used to writing for. They fail to understand that JEAP readers are critical readers with no time to waste on papers that don’t deliver innovative contributions. I wrote an earlier post about reading academic articles efficiently and new authors should keep in mind this efficient reader when they write. Critical readers need a review of ALL the literature to be cited in a paper at the beginning. They do not want to see new literature cited in a discussion. These readers want the author to build a picture of the current research field so they can decide if they agree with this. They will then use this argument to challenge the author’s subsequent claims. The literature review and discussion sections of an article should be capable of being read together – without the methods and results – to see if the author has established a coherent claim. In summary:

  • Be clear about the research orientation and requirements of the journal you’re targeting
  • Try to find research conversations within the journal that you can join
  • Locate your study within the relevant literature so your reader can recognize the conversation you want to join
  • Create an argument for a critical reader to justify doing the research and doing it in a particular way
  • Define the concepts underpinning the research so the reader can check if they agree with your definitions
  • Be clear about the contribution you can make so you don’t waste the reader’s time

I would also strongly recommend Luker (2010), which I found extremely helpful when setting out on my own research journey.

References

Luker, Kristin (2010) Salsa Dancing Into the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

FOBO: fear of being observed

Making lesson observation less threatening and more developmental

I’ve been thinking about observation of teaching for a workshop I’m preparing for the BALEAP Teacher Education Special Interest Group (TEdSIG). Observation certainly seems to engender mixed feelings amongst teachers (Wang & Seth, 1998; Jay, 2017)). In an earlier blog post on observation, I explained that although observation of teaching was mandatory at my institution for BALEAP accreditation, I was concerned to emphasize the developmental nature of observations. I thought this might make the experience less stressful for new teachers and more rewarding for returning teachers. We set up a variety of types of observation: short buzz or walk though observations and peer observations. In 2020, with all classes online, we were able to conduct asynchronous observation through recordings of online lessons. Although this form of observation could have mitigated some negative feelings, most teachers were aware that a particular lesson would be observed at some point. Their reactions were consistent with reports in the literature (Wang & Seth, 1998; Jay, 2017)

  • T 3: I had no inkling the lesson would be observed […] I am glad of the opportunity to be seen as I really am without any pretence. For better or worse!
  • T 16: I was aware that this lesson would be listened to by others and that always makes me slightly uncomfortable!
  • T 20: I think I panicked about being observed and the students for some reason chose that day to be particularly unresponsive and I ended up reading the slides.
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Professional development and the role of BALEAP

Professional development in an EAP career

I have just been given honorary membership of BALEAP: the global forum for EAP professionals. I’m delighted to have received this recognition because BALEAP has played such an important role in my professional development from my very early days of EAP teaching. This organization has provided me with access to a large network of like-minded individuals and given me opportunities, through Professional Issues Meetings (PIMs) and biennial conferences, to test my developing scholarship against expert audiences. Later in my EAP career I became involved with the BALEAP executive committee and its working parties, as TEAP Officer, then Chair of BALEAP and of the Accreditation Scheme.

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