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Action research (AR) is becoming increasingly popular in ELT contexts as a means of continuous professional development. The positive impacts of AR on language teacher development are well documented, but the important question of how those impacts can be sustained over time is virtually unexplored. Drawing on findings from a study of teachers in Australia, we address the question of the sustainability of the impact of AR. Data from a survey and interviews show that, between one and four years after completing an AR programme, the teachers felt more confident, connected to their students, research-engaged, and recognized by colleagues and managers. We argue that a balance of top-down institutional support and individual teacher motivation is essential in ensuring sustainability of the impact over time. Finally, we suggest how the benefits of AR can be sustained for teachers doing AR and their colleagues.

In the 21st century, global flows politically, socially, economically, and environmentally are creating widespread movements of people around the world and giving rise to increased resettlements of immigrants and refugees internationally. The reality in most countries worldwide is that contemporary populations are multifaceted, multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial, and multi/plurilingual. And the experience of globalization has been conceptualised as space-time compression in which relocations and dislocations are lived out alongside persistent links with global diasporas. In this complex and dynamic environment, the need for sensitively designed and socially and culturally responsible educational and language programs for adult immigrants, migrants, and refugees who relocate, both voluntarily and involuntarily, across the world has never been greater. The body of literature that currently exists focusing on English language programs for adult immigrants and refugees is fragmented and underreported. Given the growing interest from and pressure on English language educators worldwide to research, develop, and theorize such programs, the need for a collection drawing from an international body of work is pressing. This article focuses on migrant identities and subjectivities and the relative investment in language learning within individual trajectories. It shows the thematic interests of researchers engaging with research in this field that are gaining sophistication as they seek to develop new ways of theorizing, illuminating, explaining, conceptualizing, and interpreting fundamental concerns within an important and growing sector of the globalized second language teaching world.

This paper examines the beliefs and practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching reported by 176 English language teachers from 18 countries. Teachers completed a questionnaire which elicited beliefs about grammar teaching generally as well as specific beliefs and reported practices about the integration of grammar and skills teaching. Teachers expressed strong beliefs in the need to avoid teaching grammar in isolation and reported high levels of integration of grammar in their practices. This study also examines how teachers conceptualize integration and the sources of evidence they draw on in assessing the effectiveness of their instructional practices in teaching grammar. The major findings for this paper stem from an analysis of these two issues. A range of ways in which teachers understood integration are identified and classified into two broad orientations which we label temporal and contextual. An analysis of the evidence which teachers cited in making judgements about the effectiveness of their grammar teaching practices showed that it was overwhelmingly practical and experiential and did not refer in any explicit way to second language acquisition theory. Given the volume of available theory about L2 grammar teaching generally and integration specifically, the lack of direct reference to such evidence in teachers' accounts is noteworthy.

Research in the field of adult ESOL internationally is both spasmodic and fragmentary. The papers in this special issue therefore constitute a major contribution to the field by providing new insights into ESOL research from the perspective of current pedagogical practices in the British context. In this paper, I provide a response to this research from the Australasian perspective, focusing in particular on comparative work conducted in Australia, but also referring briefly to the New Zealand context. I offer comparisons and reflections from a number of perspectives including policy, research and curriculum developments that continue to shape practice in the respective pedagogical environments of Britain and Australasia. In so doing, I also make reference to specific issues raised by individual writers of the papers.

Notes that collaborative action research helped Australian adult education teachers refine their classroom skills and reflect critically on their current practice. Discusses research designed to develop teachers' skills in meeting the English language learning needs of disparate groups of learners and to assist these teachers in redirecting their classroom practices. (Author/CK) (15 references)

Australia has often been called a nation of immigrants and like many countries in the world has experienced major intakes of settlers at various periods of its history. However, among immigrant-receiving nations, Australia is unique in providing newly arrived immigrants and refugees with settlement and second-language programs that have been nationally funded for over 50 years. At the broader level, adult English as a Second Language (ESL) programs have been influenced by Australian Government policies in immigration, language, competitive tendering and labour-market development. At the program level, development has been driven by the institutionalisation of outcomes-based curriculums and the application of sociolinguistic theories to language analysis, classroom delivery and resource development. This article provides an overview of major changes that have occurred to Australian adult ESL programs over the past two decades and what the future may hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]