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This questionnaire study examined the beliefs, practices and constraints related to learner autonomy reported by 359 teachers (mainly expatriate) working on an English Preparatory Year Programme (P...

This mixed methods study adds to a growing international literature on the nature of language teachers' engagement with and in research by examining such engagement in the context of college English teaching in China. Questionnaire responses from 725 college English teachers and interviews with 20 of these teachers indicate that, although they were expected to be research-active, their reported levels of reading and doing research were moderate. An analysis of the factors behind this level of engagement reveals unproductive linear and instrumental conceptions among teachers of the relationship between research knowledge and classroom practice. A perceived discrepancy was also found between teachers' views about the research activity expected of them and the support they received from their institutions to facilitate such work. The uncertainty teachers experienced in relation to research engagement was also shaped by tensions between their views of research and its purpose and the criteria for recognizing research employed by their institutions. This study problematizes the notion of teacher as researcher by highlighting many interactive personal, interpersonal, and institutional factors which shape the extent to which teachers can be research-engaged. The article concludes by suggesting key questions that language teaching organizations wanting to promote teacher research engagement must ask.

This qualitative longitudinal study examines the impact of an intensive eight-week in-service teacher education programme in the UK on the beliefs of six English language teachers. Drawing on a substantial database of semi-structured interviews, coursework and tutor feedback, the study suggests that the programme had a considerable, if variable, impact on the teachers’ beliefs. The course allowed teachers to think more explicitly about, become aware of, and articulate their beliefs, to extend and consolidate beliefs they were initially – and sometimes tacitly – positively disposed to, and to focus on ways of developing classroom practices which reflected their beliefs. Teachers also experienced shifts in prior beliefs they held about aspects of language teaching and learning. Nonetheless, despite this evidence of impact, the data also suggest that the in-service course studied here could have engaged teachers in a more productive and sustained examination of their beliefs. Several factors relevant to such engagement are analyzed and recommendations for enhancing the impact of in-service teacher education on language teachers’ beliefs are made.

This article analyses the process of supervision by teacher educators and its influence on English language student teachers during a practicum in Kenya. The student teachers were enrolled in a four-year Bachelor of Education course for teaching English at secondary school level. Drawing on the perspectives of teacher educators, co-operating teachers and student teachers, this analysis suggests that supervision was brief and un-coordinated and that the feedback student teachers received was mainly evaluative, directive and focused on general, rather than subject-specific pedagogy. Student teachers’ concerns during the practicum were related largely to pleasing their supervisors and obtaining a pass mark, and this limited the extent to which student teachers developed the pedagogical reasoning that is considered to be the main goal of teaching practice by both the Kenya government and current literature in the field of language teacher education (LTE). This study has implications for the conduct of teaching practice on pre-service language teacher education courses in Kenya and more generally.

This study examines tensions in the grammar teaching beliefs and practices of three practising teachers of English working in Turkey. The teachers were observed and interviewed over a period of 18 months; the observations provided insights into how they taught grammar, while the interviews explored the beliefs underpinning the teachers' classroom practices. Drawing on the distinction between core and peripheral beliefs, the analysis indicated that, while at one level teachers' practices in teaching grammar were at odds with specific beliefs about language learning, at another level, these same practices were consistent with a more generic set of beliefs about learning. The latter, it is hypothesized, constituted the teachers' core beliefs and it was these, rather than the more peripheral beliefs about language learning, that were most influential in shaping teachers' instructional decisions. It is argued that attention to the relative influence of core and peripheral beliefs on teachers' practices allows for more complex understandings of tensions in teachers' work. Claims are also made here for the benefits of grounding the study of tensions between stated beliefs and classroom behaviours in the qualitative analyses of teachers' actual classroom practices. Some implications of this study for language teacher education are also discussed. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article examines the conceptions of research held by 505 teachers of English from 13 countries around the world. Questionnaire responses supplemented by follow-up written and interview data were analyzed to understand teachers’ views on what research is and how often they read and do it (and why or why not in each case). An understanding of these issues is central to the development of informed policies for promoting teacher research engagement, but relevant systematic evidence is lacking in the field of English language teaching (ELT). The study shows that the teachers held conceptions of research aligned with conventional scientific notions of inquiry. The teachers also reported moderate to low levels of reading and doing research, with a lack of time, knowledge, and access to material emerging as key factors which teachers felt limited their ability to be research-engaged. Teachers engaged in research reported being driven largely by practical and professional concerns rather than external drivers such as employers or promotion. Overall, the findings of this study point to a number of attitudinal, conceptual, procedural, and institutional barriers to teacher research engagement. Understanding these, it is argued here, is an essential part of the broader process of trying to address them and hence to make teacher research engagement a more feasible activity in ELT.

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.

Despite the substantial amount of work which has been conducted into teachers’ research engagement in mainstream education, this topic has been awarded scant attention in the field of English language teaching. This paper presents the results of a survey representing the first stage of multi-method investigation of research engagement in ELT. Moderate levels of reading and doing research were reported by the sample studied here, and this level of research engagement is analysed in relation to two key factors also examined in the survey: teacher's conceptions of research and their perceptions of the institutional research culture.

This paper reviews studies of teacher cognition in relation to the teaching of grammar in first, second, and foreign language classrooms. Teacher cognition encompasses a range of psychological constructs and these are reflected in the research reviewed here. Thus, in turn, I discuss studies of teachers' declarative knowledge about grammar, of their beliefs about teaching grammar, and of their knowledge as expressed through their grammar teaching practices. In addition to highlighting these different perspectives on the study of teacher cognition in grammar teaching, this review highlights key findings from the research and suggests directions for continuing inquiry in this field.

This paper reviews a selection of research from the field of foreign and second language teaching into what is referred to here as teacher cognition – what teachers think, know, and believe and the relationships of these mental constructs to what teachers do in the language teaching classroom. Within a framework suggested by more general mainstream educational research on teacher cognition, language teacher cognition is here discussed with reference to three main themes: (1) cognition and prior language learning experience, (2) cognition and teacher education, and (3) cognition and classroom practice. In addition, the findings of studies into two specific curricular areas in language teaching which have been examined by teacher cognition – grammar teaching and literacy – are discussed. This review indicates that, while the study of teacher cognition has established itself on the research agenda in the field of language teaching and provided valuable insight into the mental lives of language teachers, a clear sense of unity is lacking in the work and there are several major issues in language teaching which have yet to be explored from the perspective of teacher cognition.

Language teacher cognition research has deepened our understandings of the pedagogical decisions L2 teachers make and of how these are influenced by a range of psychological, socio-cultural, and environmental factors. Building on this tradition of work, this paper examines the interactions between cognitions and context in the grammar teaching practices of two experienced secondary school teachers of English in Argentina. The primary data came from classroom observations and post-lesson stimulated recall interviews in which the teachers provided the rationale for their grammar explanations. Further data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings highlight not only the array of instructional strategies employed by the teachers in their explanations but also the diverse and interacting range of pedagogical concerns which informed the choice of these strategies. The results also show evidence of the influence on teachers' pedagogical decisions of their perceptions of the context in which they worked. The findings shed light on the nature of L2 teachers' grammar-related pedagogical content knowledge. The qualitative accounts of teachers' classroom practices and of their rationales also constitute material which can be productively used in language teacher development contexts.

Forms of reflective writing such as diaries and journals are widely acknowledged as important tools in promoting both the development and the understanding of teachers. However, little attention has been awarded to the role these forms of writing can play in the development and understanding of researchers. In this paper I draw on my own experience of keeping a research journal during a study of language teaching to illustrate the significant contribution journal writing can make to deepening researchers’ understanding of all facets of the research processes. I also argue that such journals can provide other researchers with illuminating insight into the research process. Given these benefits to both writers and readers of research journals, I claim that the issue of reflective writing by researchers in language teaching merits much more discussion that it has been awarded to date.

In recent years educational research has stressed the role which teachers' subject-matter knowledge plays in shaping what they do in the classroom. In English language teaching (ELT), although the importance of teachers' knowledge about language (KAL) has also been emphasized, we lack empirical insight into the relationship between teachers' perceptions of such knowledge and their classroom practice. With specific reference to grammar, this paper presents and discusses data from classroom observations, and interviews with teachers which shed light on this issue. These data suggest that enabling teachers to develop and sustain a realistic awareness of their KAL should be an important goal for teachers education and development programmes.

Although formal instruction in second language (L2) teaching has been extensively researched in the last 20 years, this work tells us little about the actual processes of grammar teaching as these are perceived by teachers. At the same time, educational research has shown that much can be learned about the nature of instruction through the study of teacher cognition—the store of beliefs, knowledge, assumptions, theories, and attitudes about all aspects of their work which teachers hold and which have a powerful impact on teachers’ classroom practices. Studies of teacher cognition have also begun to appear in the field of L2 teaching in recent years, yet formal instruction, inexplicably, has received little attention. This paper makes a case for research on teacher cognition in grammar teaching. Such research, which focuses on understanding how teachers approach formal instruction, and why, can tell us much about the nature of grammar teaching as teachers perceive it, information which can be put to effective use in teacher education and development programmes.

Although much has been written about the role of grammatical terminology in the second language (L2) 1 classroom, empirical studies of this facet of L2 teaching are lacking. This paper addresses this issue by describing the use of terminology in the practices of four L2 teachers and discussing the motivations for the teachers' decisions regarding this aspect of their work. The research data base consisted of audio recordings of teachers' lessons and of interviews in which the teachers discussed the use of terminology in these lessons. The analysis highlights a range of experiential, cognitive, and contextual factors which impinged on teachers' use of terminology. This paper makes a case for the contribution research into teachers' practices and cognitions can make to a fuller and more realistic understanding of the role of terminology in L2 instruction.

Meta talk - defined here as explicit talk about grammar - is a facet of foreign language (FL) teaching which has not attracted much research interest over the years. Prompted by this gap in our understanding of FL instruction, I undertook a study of the role of meta talk in the classroom practice of two teachers of English as a foreign language. The research provided both descriptive data about the initiation, development, and outcomes of meta talk in the teachers' work, as well as insight into the rationale behind the approaches to meta talk which these teachers adopted. The study identifies a wide range of methodological, psychological and experiential factors which shape the role meta talk plays in FL classrooms and outlines issues for further research in this area of FL teaching.

Despite the centrality of grammar in L2 research and methodology over the years, the cognitive bases of teachers' instructional decisions in grammar teaching are relatively unexplored. This interpretive study focuses on this issue by analysing the teaching of grammar in an L2 classroom from the perspective of the personal pedagogical systems—stores of beliefs, knowledge, theories, assumptions, and attitudes—that play a significant role in shaping teachers' instructional decisions. The author examines the role of grammar teaching in the classroom practice of an experienced teacher of EFL and discusses the nature of the personal pedagogical system that influenced his practice. In particular, the study illustrates the manner in which the teacher's instructional decisions in teaching grammar were shaped by the interaction of his pedagogical system, his educational and professional experiences, and the context of instruction. The author argues that research into teachers' pedagogical systems can contribute to a fuller and more realistic understanding of L2 grammar instruction.