Handbook of Research in

Second Language Teaching

and Learning
This page intentionally left blank
 Handbook of Research in
Second Language Teaching
and Learning

Edited by

Eli Hinkel
Seattle University

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

2005 Mahwah, New Jersey London
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Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning / edited by Eli Hinkel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-8058-4180-6 (casebound: acid-free paper)—ISBN 0-8058-4181-4 (pbk.: acid-free paper)
1. Second language acquisition. 2. Language and languages—Study and teaching.
3. English language—Study and teaching—Foreign speakers. I. Hinkel, Eli.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 This book is dedicated to the memory of
David Ellsworth Eskey
May 22,1933, to October 19,2002
David's contribution to the study and teaching of language and second
language has played an important role in expanding the knowledge of
thousands of teachers and graduate students, who read and benefited from
his work. David was an excellent scholar and teacher, whose dedication to
his students and the cause of reading remained unfailing, heartfelt, and
sincere. Among applied linguists and reading researchers, David con-
tinually advanced that scarce variety of intellectual thought known as
common sense. He will be greatly missed.
11
Case Study
Leo van Lier
Monterey Institute of International Studies

WHAT ARE CASE STUDIES?

As a research methodology, case study research has been extremely influential in

shaping the way we talk about education, yet it has traditionally been regarded as
somewhat of a soft and weak approach when compared to studies that have been
deemed more rigorous, randomized, or experimental in nature. In general education
we can cite Wolcott's classic case study of "The man in the principal's office" (1973)1; in
language acquisition theory, Halliday's study of Nigel (1975); and in second language
learning, Schmidt's study of Wes (1983). These and many other case studies have
shaped discussion and research in their respective fields of focus in forceful and
productive ways. This chapter aims to examine the case study as a valuable tool to
examine educational reality.
Case study research is primarily a form of qualitative and interpretive research,
although quantitative analyses are sometimes used if they are deemed relevant. It
relates in various ways to other kinds of research, such as action research, ethnography,
and experimental research. This chapter describes what case study research is, how
and why it is done, and evaluate its impact on the field over the past 2 or 3 decades.
Case study research has become a key method for researching changes in complex
phenomena over time. Many of the processes investigated in case studies cannot
be adequately researched in any of the other common research methods, such as
laboratory experiments, cross-sectional process-product research (such as pretest-
treatment-posttest measures), and direct testing. But how do we know when a case
study is the best way to approach a certain area of investigation and when another
method might be more effective? I will try to answer that question in this introduction.
Among the advantages of the case study approach are the attention to context and
the ability to track and document change (such as language development) over time.
In addition, a case study zeros in on a particular case (an individual, a group, or a
situation) in great detail, within its natural context of situation, and tries to probe into
its characteristics, dynamics, and purposes.
When a case study is about an individual, we want to understand how that in-
dividual functions in the real context in which he or she lives or works. As Johnson
says:

195
196 VAN L1ER

case studies can provide rich information about an individual learner. They can in-
form us about the processes and strategies that individual L2 [second language] learn-
ers use to communicate and learn, how their personalities, attitudes, and goals interact
with the learning environment, and about the precise nature of their linguistic growth.
(1992, p. 76)

So, case studies focus on context, change over time, and specific learners or groups.
In other words, when we want to understand how a specific unit (person, group)
functions in the real world over a significant period of time, a case study approach
may be the best way to go about it.
One of the classic texts on case study research is Yin (1989). He defines case study
as, "an empirical inquiry that:

• investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context;

• when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident;
and in which
• multiple sources of evidence are used."(p. 23).

Yin's definition establishes some proposed features of the notion of case: a phe-
nomenon in a real-life context (as opposed to, presumably, a laboratory setting), but
one in which the notion of "boundaries" between phenomenon and context may be
somewhat blurred. Let's explore this a bit further. Merriam (1988/1998) defines a case
as "a single instance, phenomenon, or social unit" (p. 27). Other authors likewise
struggle with this notion of boundedness. For Smith (1978), a case is a "bounded sys-
tem." Stake (1995) calls it an "integrated system." Miles and Huberman (1994) call
a case "a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context" (p. 25). These
quotes point to a major problem area, which we can sum up in the question: What
are the boundaries of a case? Merriam admonishes us that, "if the phenomenon you
are interested in studying is not intrinsically bounded, it is not a case" (p. 27). On
the other hand, Miles and Huberman suggest that intrinsic boundedness may not be
so easy to establish. They agree that the case must be the unit of analysis, in which
there is a "heart" or focus of the study, but then there is a "somewhat indeterminate
boundary defining the edge of the case: what will not be studied" (1994, p. 25).
We can see in this argument some kind of struggle about defining what a case
really is. Of course, if it is one person, the boundary—in a relatively trivial sense—
is the skin around the body. But this merely sidesteps the social, distributed side of
behavior, cognition, and interaction. The point here is that if the case study draws the
boundary rigidly, it may oversimplify and isolate the case.
Having looked at the characteristics of the notion of "case" and its boundedness in
the larger context, we can proceed to identify different kinds of cases. In the first place,
a case can be a single individual, such as a second language learner. However, a case
can also be a group of individuals with a common context, set of goals, or some kind of
institutional boundedness. Examples are a classroom, a foreign language department,
a program, a school, or an administrative office. Clearly, all of these examples, from
individual to group to institution, are bounded in some way, but in none of the cases
are the boundaries impermeable or watertight.
Another approach to specifying the notion of case is L. S. Shulman's classification
of the use of cases and case methods in education. He distinguishes seven common
types of cases:

1. Case materials: the raw data that are used (diaries, interview data, transcriptions).
2. Case reports: first-person accounts, usually in narrative form.
 1 1 . CASE STUDY 197

3. Case studies: third-person accounts, the most common way in which cases are
reported.
4. Teaching cases: case studies that are edited for training or teaching purposes, for
example, those commonly used in business schools.
5. Case methods of teaching: a methodology developed for teaching by means of
teaching cases.
6. Casebooks: collections of cases, for example, for teacher education (J. H. Shulman,
1992).
7. Case-based curriculum: a curriculum built around the use of cases, casebooks, etc.
(J. S. Shulman, 1992, p. 19).

In second language acquisition (SLA), most of the time we will be referring to

case studies (the third category above), that is, descriptive third-person accounts
of a learner or a group of learners. However, as I will illustrate, below, we can
also use case studies as input in SLA courses (including book-length autobiograph-
ical novels, as suggested in Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000), and we can, of course, also
use teaching cases in preservice or inservice professional development for language
teachers.

THE PLACE OF CASE STUDY RESEARCH IN SLA THEORY

AND PRACTICE

This section places case study research within the larger topic of research in SLA
and applied linguistics and discusses how it can contribute to the knowledge of the
field. As mentioned in the introduction, case study research is usually qualitative and
interpretive (even though there is no argument that precludes quantification, see Yin,
1989). Case studies are contextual forms of research, and as we have seen, one of
the inherent problems is to draw the boundaries around the case. Another variable
concerns the degree of intervention in the setting that is designed into the study. At
the least-intervention end research is more ethnographic, and at the more intervention
end research becomes action research.
These observations mean that ethnographies and action research are in a sense
case studies because they fall within the scope of Yin's definition quoted above.
In Fig. 11.1 the variables "individual-collective" (i.e., one person or a group) and

FIG. l l . l . Approaches to Case Study Research.

198 VAN LIER

"no intervention-invention" (i.e., if some kind of treatment or change is involved)

are juxtaposed to show how case studies may take varying approaches in prac-
tice.
In the past, case studies have often been accorded less status than more rigorously
controlled experimental or process-product studies because, as the argument often
goes, case studies are not generalizable. However, this criticism is unwarranted. It
is probably true that it is difficult to generalize from an individual (or a group) to
an entire population without the presence of strict controls to account for environ-
mental variables. However, there is also a form of generalization that proceeds not
from an individual case to a population, but from lower-level constructs to higher-
level ones. Futhermore, in the practical world in which case studies are conducted,
particularization may be just as important—if not more so—than generalization. By par-
ticularization I mean that insights from a case study can inform, be adapted to, and
provide comparative information to a wide variety of other cases, so long as one is
careful to take contextual differences into account. Furthermore, if two cases provide
apparently contradictory information about a certain issue, such as social and psy-
chological distance in the cases of Alberto (Schumann, 1978) and Wes (Schmidt, 1983),
this contrast can provide much food for thought and further research, thus being of
great benefit to the field.
If we look at the history of our field, it is no exaggeration to say that several famous
case studies have played a large role in shaping the knowledge base that we now
have. In first language acquisition we have the well known case study of Nigel by
M. A. K. Halliday (1975). This study was instrumental in shaping Halliday's perspec-
tive on functional grammar and his view of language as social semiotic. In applied
linguistics, seminal case studies include the already mentioned study by Schumann
of Alberto (1978) a Puerto Rican immigrant to the United States, and Schmidt's two
case studies, one of Wes (1983) a Japanese painter living in Hawaii, and the other of R
(Schmidt himself, as a learner of Portuguese in Brazil; Schmidt & Frota, 1986). The lat-
ter is also a first-person diary study, and thus illustrates a different genre within case
study.
These case studies helped to shape these researchers' theoretical positions, and
they have also helped to shape the entire field in quite substantial ways. Schumann
developed his notions of social and psychological distance on the basis of the Alberto
study, and from these ideas he constructed the acculturation model, which to this day
is a prominent topic of discussion in the field. Schmidt, on the other hand, in his case
study of Wes, pointed to certain problems with Schumann's model, and looked in
detail at the construct of communicative competence to suggest some ways in which
the acculturation model might have to be reevaluated. In the later study on R, Schmidt
focused on attention and noticing and used the case study findings to make detailed
proposals about the role of consciousness in a number of later studies. We can thus
conclude that, far from being marginal studies of merely anecdotal value, case studies
have played a key role in shaping the knowledge base of SLA.
Also worth mentioning is the value of case study as a vehicle for apprenticing stu-
dents in the field (in preservice and postgraduate programs). There are two particular
ways in which case studies are used (and are useful) as inductions into the field. First,
given the bewildering variety and complexity of the issues involved in SLA (from the
perspective of the novice), a well written case study can bring to life many key issues
and illustrate their relevance in dramatic, contextualized ways, something that a text-
book or a controlled experimental research study cannot do. Second, it can be very
valuable for graduate students in SLA to conduct a small case study as part of their
introduction to the research community. Once again, such hands-on contextualized
work can be instrumental in bringing to life the questions and problems discussed in
the theoretical textbooks and research reports.
 11. CASE STUDY 199

THE HISTORY OF CASE STUDIES IN SLA

This section summarizes some of the major case studies that have been conducted
and shows how they have been influential in the field. For convenience I will divide
them into studies of adult and child L2 development.

Case Studies of Adult SLA Development

I already mentioned the case studies by Schumann (1978) and Schmidt (1983; Schmidt
& Frota, 1986), and indicated how these studies have contributed tremendously to
some of the core discussions in our field. There have been a number of other case
studies of adult learners, and I will give just a brief overview here of some of the most
well known ones.
One of the major longitudinal studies was conducted under the auspices of the Eu-
ropean Science Foundation (ESF) over a period of 10 years, in five different European
countries (France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).
Participants were adult immigrants speaking a variety of minority languages: Pun-
jabi, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, and Finnish. The study is actually a hybrid
between a crosslinguistic data collection project and a contextualized observational
project. It is perhaps due to this tension between controlled elicitation and participant
observation, the study has resulted in several publications that are quite different in
nature. Linguistic sequences and interlanguage grammars are carefully traced and
documented in, for example, Klein and Perdue (1992), whereas a more interpretive,
ethnographic perspective (i.e., a more traditional case study approach, with strong
narrative elements) was taken in Bremer, Roberts, Vasseur, Simonot, and Breeder, 1996.
As discussed in the following, the ESF study led to the description of a "basic va-
riety" of language, sufficient for minimal survival purposes, but one that immigrants
often cannot get beyond. One the other hand, the ESF study also showed the need to
study language development in its social context (see also Norton Peirce, 1995), and
to focus on issues of understanding, awareness, identity, and power.
Some other case studies of adult SLA, for example, Huebner (1983), loup, Boustagui,
El Tigi, and Moselle (1995), include detailed and meticulous documentation of lin-
guistic development. Huebner's study of a Hmong immigrant in Hawaii tracks, for
example, the development of the article system over an extended period of time, and
loup et al. study the learning histories and the nativelike performance (including
syntactic and phonological) of two successful learners of Egyptian Arabic.

Case Studies of Child Second Language Development

There have been a large number of studies of first and second language acquisition
of children. The first well known effort was Leopold's study of the acquisition of
German and English by his daughter Hildegard, conducted over a number of years
beginning in the 1930's (Hatch, 1978). Another major effort is Slobin's edited series
of crosslinguistic studies of first and second language acquisition in five volumes
(so far 1985-1992). This contains case studies in a number of different countries and
languages.
In addition, Elisabeth Bates, Brian MacWhinney, and associates (MacWhinney &
Bates, 1989) have conducted a series of studies from the perspective of the compe-
tition model of language acquisition, and more recently, the emergentist perspective
(MacWhinney, 1999). In these case studies the argument is made that the environ-
ment plays a crucial role in language acquisition, thus contradicting the perspective
of nativist researchers in the Chomskyan tradition who, by and large, consider the
environmental contribution to be limited, minimal, or even just trivial (Pinker, 1994).
2OO VAN L1ER

Given the great variety of child language acquisition studies, I will take one crucial
topic in SLA and see how case studies have dealt with it. This is the topic of sequences
of acquisition, that is, the stages that learners go through in the acquisition of the
second language. This issue is very important because educators, politicians, parents,
and all other stakeholders continually debate the question of how long it takes En-
glish language learners to reach a level of proficiency that allows them to profit from
mainstream education (Hakuta, 1986; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000; van Lier, 1999).

SEQUENCES IN SLA—A CASE IN POINT

L2 learners, especially young children, often begin their learning career with a silent
stage, which can last for several months. During this stage, which Itoh and Hatch (1978,
p. 78) call the "rejection stage," learners don't speak, and it is unclear how much they
absorb. It often appears to be a rather traumatic period, during which learners have
problems adjusting in the new setting, especially in immersion contexts.
Once learners begin to speak, they tend to use formulaic expressions for conversa-
tional interaction and acquire basic vocabulary. Most case studies report that gram-
matical structures used in these early stages are "unanalyzed," that is, they cannot
be used to produce new utterances. Rather, they are acquired as whole chunks, as
if they were one word'. An example would be "I dunno," which contains a subject
pronoun (I), an auxiliary verb (DO), a negator (NOT) and a lexical verb (KNOW), but
learners do not know this at this formulaic stage (Fillmore, 1976). It is only later that
they begin to distinguish verbs, negators, etc., and auxiliary verbs are acquired even
later than that. So, a child may say, "I dunno" (or "adunno," more precisely) after a
few months of learning English, and only later begin to realize that this is a phrase
consisting of four words. In addition, something that was said correctly at one stage,
such as an irregular verb form (gave, came) may at a later stage be changed to an in-
correct form (gived, corned) due to the powerful influence of a rule that is beginning to
be learned. This phenomenon is known as the U-shaped learning curve (Kellerman,
1985), where learning new structures involves breaking apart conversational chunks
that were learned earlier as unanalyzed units.
A more psycholinguistic or cognitive science approach to the issue of developmen-
tal processing is illustrated in the recent work of Manfred Pienemann (Pienemann,
1998). The processibility theory developed by Pienemann posits that there are certain
stages of cognitive complexity and processing constraints in language that lead to a
clearly identifiable progression in acquisition. Without going into the complex details
of Pienemann's theory, at every stage there are certain prerequisites that need to be
met for further progress to be possible. For example, rich lexical information needs to
be available before a progression to complex syntactic patterns is possible.
Returning to the case studies, in most instances data are collected for about 6 months
or less to a year or a bit more, and they report little grammatical development beyond
the formulaic level (Fillmore, 1976; Itoh & Hatch, 1978). Some of the longer case stud-
ies, those that last for more than a year (Hakuta, 1975; Sato, 1990) report at the end of
their study a level of grammatical mastery that is still very simple. Syntactic features
such as third-person s (she walks), auxiliary verbs, modals, past tense, subordina-
tion, and relative clauses, and so on, are rarely developed after 1 year of exposure to
English.
In case studies of adults, which are often longer than 1 year, sometimes up to
3 or 5 years long (Huebner, 1983; loup et al., 1995; Klein & Perdue, 1992; Schmidt,
1983; Shapira, 1978), a picture of great variability emerges. It appears that adults (say,
Iearnersl9 and older; see also Bialystok & Hakuta, 1994) have a far greater range of
variation in terms of speed of acquisition and ultimate achievement than do younger
 11. CASE STUDY 2O1

learners. One plausible reason for this is that younger people are in a relatively ho-
mogeneous school environment, and the range of expectations and peer contexts is
similar. At least this applies to those younger people who are or remain in the school
environment, and who therefore are available to be tested.
Many studies of adults (e.g., Huebner, 1983; Schmidt, 1983; Schumann, 1978) show
very little grammatical improvement over time, and even studies of exceptionally
successful learners show a process that takes several years (Dietrich, Klein, & Noyau,
1995; loup et al., 1995). Klein and Perdue, in their extensive study of second language
development (the European Science Foundation project previously mentioned), re-
port that all learners (at least untutored learners) begin by developing a "basic vari-
ety" that is grammatically very simple, but versatile and flexible for use in everyday
conversation (Klein & Perdue, 1992). This basic variety is similar to what Schumann
called "pidginization," and it may involve "fossilization" (Schumann, 1978). These
latter terms refer to cases in which the learner stays at this simple grammatical stage
indefinitely, a phenomenon Klein and Perdue also report for many of the learners
studied in their multiyear, multicountry project (Klein & Perdue, 1992). However,
Klein and Perdue also report cases of learners who, after 1 lfa or 2 years (there is great
variability) begin to move out of the basic variety and begin to develop more com-
plex grammatical structures, which gradually allow them a wider range of linguistic
comprehension and expression.
To illustrate the issue of sequences in second language acquisition, the following
are some brief summaries of some of the classic case studies:

• Hakuta (1976): Hakuta studied the acquisition of English of Uguisu, the 5-year-
old daughter of a visiting scholar from Japan. Data were collected for a period of 60
weeks (roughly 1 year and 2 months), after Uguisu had had 5 months of exposure to
English. The first 5 months (before data collection began) appear to have been a silent
period. At the end of the data collection period (after data sample 30), the following
grammatical (morphosyntactic) features are reported as not having been acquired:

3rd person s
irregular past
regular past
plural s

Although Uguisu achieved criterion (that is, 90% correct use for articles around week
40; Hakuta argues, through an analysis of correct use, that full semantic control of the
article system is not acquired until much later).
• Yoshida (1978): A 3.5-year-old Japanese boy, Mikihide, was observed over a pe-
riod of 7 months to study vocabulary development. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test (PPVT) was administered twice. During the first 3 months the subject produced
one-word utterances. Comprehension was far superior to production. In 7 months, he
acquired about 260 words, in many cases aided by recognition of English loanwords
in Japanese. In production, his pronunciation was not always recognized by native
speakers of English, and "iz" was used as a generic verb.
• Itoh and Hatch (1978): A Japanese child, Takahiro, 2.6 years old, was observed for
6 months in naturalistic context (observations, recordings). Itoh and Hatch identified
three stages of language development over the period of the study:

rejection stage (3 months)

repetition stage (end of 3rd month)
spontaneous speech stage (4th month)
2Q2 VAN LIER

The repetition stage began when Takahiro's aunt came to visit and began to play a
"repeat after me" game with pictures. At the end of the study, verb acquisition was
quite limited in comparison to nouns. He did not mark sentences for tense. There was
no evidence of 3rd person s, or of development of AUX (auxiliaries). His utterances
were not highly developed, but he could carry on conversations quite easily with
others.
• Sato (1990): Sato studied two Vietnamese brothers, 10 and 12, living with an
English-speaking family. The length of the study was 1 year and 3 months. The par-
ticipants went to school but received no native language support and no English as
a Second Language (ESL) classes. The oldest, Thanh, was placed in sixth grade, the
younger brother, Tai, in a third/fourth grade combination class. Sato focused on past
tense reference and found very little evidence of syntacticization and minimal im-
provement over time. No consistent inflected past verbs were observed. Next, Sato
discussed complex propositions and their syntactic encoding (predication, argument
structure) and found very little evidence of the acquisition of complex propositions.
Development of subordination, complementation, relative clauses, etc., was also min-
imal. At the end of the study the brothers were only just beginning to use logical
connectors.
• Butterworth and Hatch (1978): This study focused on a 13 year-old Colombian,
upper-class boy. He had had grammatical instruction in English in Colombia. He had
been in school in the United States for 2 months when the study began. The study
lasted 3 months, hence, final reports cover a 5-month span. Ricardo had problems
adjusting to America. He did not develop tense or aspect, did not use DO-support,
did not develop objective or possessive case for pronouns. Butterworth and Hatch
hypothesized that the tremendous pressure Ricardo was under to express complex
meanings resulted in reduction and simplification of both input and output. Overall,
he showed very little improvement over the period.
• Fillmore (1976): The study looked at the L2 development of five Latino children
over a period of 1 school year, from September to March. During that period, two of
the children went back to Mexico for up to several months. Note, this is an issue that
needs to be reckoned with: many students miss substantial portions of the school year
because their families take extended trips back home, especially around Christmas
time. Fillmore reported little solid progress in terms of structural development and
cited a wide variation in conversational strategies used by the children to join games
in the playground, etc.

To summarize, if we use case studies to address the question of how long it takes
for children to acquire a second language, no clear answer emerges because the case
studies are too short to provide the full picture. However, it does become clear that
second language acquisition, even for children (who are popularly supposed to just
"pick it up"), is a protracted affair, taking much longer than is commonly assumed.
Children do give the impression early on of surprising conversational ability, but
the case studies show that this impression is created by clever use of conversational
phrases.
Following from this conclusion, it should come as no surprise that when English
language learners reach a stage in their schooling (from fourth grade upward) when
cognitive and academic language skills become of paramount importance, they hit a
wall of complexity that their basic conversational skills cannot penetrate, and at that
point they fall further and further behind (a phenomenon Dutch researchers have
called divergence, see Verhoeven, 1990), unless specific steps are taken to develop their
academic-linguistic competence. Superficial examinations of these learners' language
skills (often by linguistically naive/untrained counselors) suggest that this is not a
language problem, and these learners are then simply shunted into low expectation
 1 1. CASE STUDY 2O3

streams or tracks. Politicians and other public figures who know little or nothing about
language acquisition are able to claim, on the basis of hearsay about the linguistic
precocity of some children who, using a reduced basic variety, are able to impress
adults with their apparent fluency, that children can learn a second language within
a year, and that this is sufficient for mainstreaming in the school system. There are no
reliable data of any kind that could possibly support such claims or practices, which
therefore must be regarded as wholly irresponsible and unprofessional.
Case studies are a powerful way of showing some of the complexities of acquiring
a second language. Many more such studies are needed that document the acquisition
of academic discourse at the middle and secondary school level, to find out precisely
what the difficulties are that students face at that point and to develop strategies that
work (Gibbons, 2002; Nystrand, 1997).

CURRENT ISSUES

Currently a great deal of educational research focuses on longitudinal, situative (con-

textualized), and ecological studies, ideal topics for a case study approach. In gen-
eral education, an ongoing debate is that between cognitivist and situative research
paradigms (Anderson, Reder, & Simon, 1997; Greeno, 1997). Issues that are debated
include the role of social context (and social activity) in the acquisition of skills and
knowledge and, relatedly, the extent to which abilities acquired in one task context can
be transferred to another context. This notion of the relative situatedness of knowl-
edge and skills is also important in SLA. Proficiency is variable, and the conditions
that govern this variability are not at all well understood (Tarone, 1983). van Lier and
Matsuo (2000) take a conversation analytical approach to variation in L2 proficiency,
but it is likely that carefully documented case studies can also shed much further light
on this area (Norton, 2000).
Another area much in need of case study research is the role of technology in SLA
for example, case studies of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC; Warschauer
& Kern, 2000). Questions addressed include the similarities and differences between
face-to-face interaction and CMC, issues of motivation and autonomy in online learn-
ing contexts (Wegerif, 1998), and the challenges of building collaborative communities
of learners online. One area of great urgency is the so-called Digital Divide, the no-
tion that access to technology is inherently unequally distributed among different
social groups, genders, schools, countries, and so on. One approach taken to this issue
by politicians, administrators, and business leaders is to provide "free" (nothing is
ever really free, of course) hardware and wiring to poor neighborhoods and schools.
However, cursory inspection suffices to reveal that, even if equipment and wiring are
identical, access is not thereby magically equalized. For example, it is frequently ob-
served that in poorer schools students tend to do mind-numbing "drill-and-kill" types
of work, whereas in wealthier schools students will be designing websites, movies,
electronic portfolios, and so on (Crook, 1994; Merrow, 1995). Case studies can do much
to illuminate the ingredients of inequality in schools and to dispel the notion that the
Digital Divide is basically about hardware and software. It is much more basically
about pedagogy, professional preparation, and curriculum.
A further area in which the case study approach can be very useful is in teacher
education, both pre-service and in-service. I already suggested that in graduate SLA
courses students can profit from studying the prominent case studies in the field and
also from conducting their own small case study. In addition, teacher professional
development benefits from the use of case descriptions, either as small vignettes or
as longer narrative descriptions of specific settings. Examples of this include Bailey,
Curtis, & Nunan (2001), Clandinin and Connolly (1995), and Shulman (1992).
204 VAN LIER

Finally, critical applied linguists (Pennycook, 2001) and critical discourse analysts
(Auerbach, 1992; Clark & Ivanic, 1997; Fairclough, 1995) take an overtly ideolog-
ical stance that aims to bring about social and educational change in the settings
in which we work. They basically take the perspective that language is a political
tool, often used as a form of control, persuasion, exclusion, and discrimination. Lit-
eracy, writing, and general language classes can focus on the sources and processes
that produce these forms of linguistic inequality and assist learners in developing an
awareness of the uses and abuses of language and propose strategies to counteract
them. Case studies such as those conducted by Norton (1995,1997,2000), Heller and
Martin-Jones (2001), Sarangi (1999), and Coupland (1997) can highlight such issues
as racial discrimination, ageism, gender inequalities, stereotyping, the denigration of
specific accents and dialects (such as "Ebonics"), and so on. Such cases can speak
strongly to teachers, students, and policymakers, illustrating linguistic struggles in
more vivid ways than any textbook treatment or lecture can accomplish.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

There is an unmistakable direction in the social sciences toward a greater scrutiny of

contextual factors in our efforts to understand complex phenomena such as language
learning. After decades of research dominated by Cartesian (nomothetic) reduction-
ism, in which complex phenomena are broken down into small pieces that are then
investigated in controlled laboratory conditions, most researchers now acknowledge
the need to take contextual factors into account. This does not mean the abolishment
of nomothetic research, but it does mean the acceptance, broadly speaking, of contex-
tualized forms of research as an equal contributor to our stock of knowledge.
This acceptance requires the development of new research approaches. A crucial
element in this development is the examination of earlier pioneers who worked in
contextual ways, but whose achievements were drowned out by the experimental,
controlled, and causal claims of psychometricians and researchers looking for statis-
tical significance. Thus, the work of Vygotsky (1978; van der Veer & Valsiner, 1994),
Lewin (1943), Bruner (1986), Bateson (1979) and many others is experiencing a renais-
sance. Simultaneously, the traditional "hard" sciences such as mathematics, physics,
and biology are experiencing a ground shift. Quantum theory, chaos and complexity
theory, and systems theory are transforming our view of the entire physical world
(Capra, 1996). These changes will also transform the way the educational and second
language community does its research, and the way it builds its ontology and episte-
mology. For example, when I discussed the problems with boundaries in the introduc-
tion, I could have added a discussion on complex adaptive systems, self-regulating
systems, dissipative structures, and other concepts that derive from complexity the-
ory (Larsen-Freeman, 1997; van Lier, 2004). Clearly, the old order will no longer do.
Even if it continues its tradition of using the hard sciences (which turn out to be much
softer than we previously assumed) as an ideal to be emulated, it will have to come to
grips with a shift of focus toward context rather than isolation, understanding rather
than proof, and relations rather than objects.
With this renewed importance of context in mind, what are some topics that future
case studies might address? A few possibilities are:

• Activity theory. One model of activity theory has been illustrated by Engestrom
(1966) in an investigation of medical clinics in Finland. It may be a useful con-
textual model for case studies in language learning contexts that systematically
examine practices and institutional structures alongside the activities of learners.
• Academic language development for mainstreamed English language learners. What
 1 1. CASE STUDY 2O5

are the difficulties that students face and how do they and their teachers deal
with them? Also, the role of the student's native or other language(s) in the
acquisition of academic English abilities needs much more scrutiny than it has
hitherto received.
• Ecological validity in research and assessment practices. Contextualized case studies of
large-scale standardized testing compared with case studies in settings in which
authentic, performance-based forms of assessment are used (such as portfolios).
• Project-based approaches to language learning, with a focus on the use of various tech-
nologies. How do learners adapt to a learning situation that is not transmission-
based but in which they have choices and basically construct their own learning
environment?
• Systems theory as a model for contextualized research. In addition to Engestrom's
activity theory model previously mentioned, there are other contextual research
models that can be usefully applied in case study research. These include
Bronfenbrenner's nested ecosystems (1979,1993) and Checkland's soft systems
model (1981; van Lier, 2004).

Contextualized research such as case study research is complex and messy. Some
theory of connecting context and case is necessary, regardless of how the boundaries of
the case are drawn. I have mentioned just three models of context: Engestrom's activity
theory, Bronfenbrenner's nested ecosystems, and Checkland's soft systems approach.
Which particular model is used is perhaps less important than the realization that a
consistent and systematic view of context and a clear connection between person and
context are necessary. This is particularly so when the case study is an intrinsic rather
than an instrumental one, to use a distinction made by Stake (1995). In an intrinsic case
study the case itself is the focus of attention, the case (a student, a class, a group, etc.)
is intrinsically interesting to the researcher. In such a case contextual factors are, as
previously argued, of key importance. If, on the other hand, the motivation for the case
study is a particular research question, the focus will be on gathering the relevant data
rather than on the case itself. This type of study is called an instrumental case study by
Stake (1995). In practice, however, it is often not easy to distinguish particular studies
so easily, because they usually combine both intrinsic and extrinsic or instrumental
interests, either from the outset, or because certain interesting phenomena emerge
during the study. But Stake's general point is well taken: "The more the case study is
an intrinsic case study, the more attention needs to be paid to the contexts" (1995, p. 64).

CONCLUSION

Cases are specific persons, places, or events that are interesting and worthy of intensive
study. The case is a real-life entity that operates in a specific time and place. Whether
or not the contextual boundaries can be easily drawn, case study is contextual study,
unfolding over time and in real settings. Often the phenomena of interest become
visible as the case study proceeds, surprising facts come to light and demand attention.
Case studies have often been regarded as somewhat marginal compared to more
experimentally controlled types of study. I have tried to show in this chapter that,
in fact, case studies have played a crucial role in shaping our field, and that their
importance as ways of doing research is likely to increase over the near term, as the
importance of contextual analysis is realized more and more.
A number of resources containing advice about doing case studies exist. In the
general educational field, some of the major sources are Merriam (1998), Miles and
Huberman (1994), Stake (1995), and Yin (1989). In the applied linguistics and language
learning field, sources include Johnson (1992) and Nunan (1992).
2O6 VAN LIER

One of the inherent problems in doing case studies is the drawing of boundaries, in
time and space, around the case. How long? How many different places? How many
people and influences? Some contextual framework is needed, and I suggested three:
Engestrom's activity model (1996), Bronfenbrenner's nested ecosystems (1979), and
Checkland's soft systems method (1981). Any one of these models, or other systematic
models of context, can help the case researcher navigate the contextual chaos that
seems to surround every interesting case.
Once the case and its contexts are drawn as a rough sketch or framework, a major
task of the case study researcher is that of telling the story of the case. Descriptive
and narrative skill are essential to bring the crucial points across in vivid and realistic
ways to the audience for whom the case study is intended. Once again, such narrative
reporting has at times been sneered at for being subjective and unscientific. However,
recent work has forcefully established narrative (or discursive) work as potentially
rigorous and frequently highly incisive and revealing (Harre & Gillett, 1994; McEwan
& Egan, 1995; Wortham, 2001).
In addition to contributing in major ways to the field, case studies can be useful in at
least two other ways: as an induction to the field for graduate students in educational
linguistics, both in terms of studying the classic case studies and in terms of conducting
their own small studies; and as tools in teacher education and development (Bailey,
Curtis, & Nunan, 2001; Clandinin & Connolly, 1995).
It is perhaps appropriate to finish with a quote from Stake. It may sound somewhat
lofty, but it is a useful antidote to an educational and political culture that at times
seems to find significance and value only in rankings of people and schools based on
standardized test scores.

Finishing a case study is the consummation of a work of art. A few of us will find case
study, excepting our family business, the finest work of our lifetime. Because it is an
exercise in such depth, the study is an opportunity to see what others have not yet seen,
to reflect the uniqueness of our own lives, to engage the best of our interpretive powers,
and to make, even by its integrity alone, an advocacy for those things we cherish. The
case study ahead is a splendid palette (1995, p. 136).

NOTES

1. Wolcott calls his study an ethnography, but it is at the same time a case study, under the definitions
discussed in this chapter.

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14

Action Research
Anne Burns
Maccjuarie University

INTRODUCTION

This chapter begins by positioning action research (AR) in relation to other better
known paradigms of research and outlines shifts in the way it has developed and
been realized philosophically and practically. The second half focuses on how AR
has been taken up in English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts and highlights some
of the current debates around its validity as a research approach. Examples of three
different forms of current AR reporting are discussed. Predictions about its potential
to inform socioconstructivist and sociopolitical perceptions of language pedagogy
and practice are suggested.
Despite many varying definitions of AR (e.g., Bogdan & Biklen, 1982; Ebbutt, 1983;
Elliot, 1981; Halsey, 1972; Rapoport, 1970), one common thread is that participants in a
given social situation classroom are themselves centrally involved in a systematic pro-
cess of enquiry arising from their own practical concerns. This is the major distinction
between AR and other forms of applied research, in which participants investigate
issues considered theoretically significant in the field (Burns, 2000; Crookes, 1993).
Although interpretations and definitions of AR are still very much under develop-
ment, one of the most frequently cited is from Carr and Kemmis (1986, p. 162):

Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in

order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding
of these practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out.

Thus, other central characteristics of AR are the enhancement of practice, the de-
velopment of new theoretical understandings, and the introduction of change into the
social enterprise.
Although not exactly new, AR is still (re)emerging as a branch of research in edu-
cation generally and is now gaining growing currency in the field of ELT. Its scope,
however, extends well beyond these fields to industry (Argyris & Schon, 1978), health
(Kember, 2001), and community (Batliwala & Patel, 1997) settings. In this chapter I
trace the history of AR, the various ways it has been conceptualized, and how it has
been taken up in the field of ELT. I discuss some of the criticisms leveled against this
241
242 BURNS

form of inquiry and point to some possible future directions. As the scope of the AR
literature is large, I confine my discussion in the second half of the chapter to the ELT
field.

THE ORIGINS OF ACTION RESEARCH

The sources of AR are located within "a quiet methodological revolution" (Denzin
& Lincoln, 1998, p.vii) that has been taking place over at least the last 50 years in
research in the social sciences and humanities. It is part of a movement toward qual-
itative, interpretive, and participative research paradigms that expanded dramati-
cally during the 20th century to contest the dominant positivist, scientific worldview
that originated in the 15th century with the Enlightenment. Reason (1998, pp. 261-
262), although acknowledging the role of positivist research in releasing society from
"the bonds of superstition and Scholasticism," sees as its major limitation the nar-
rowing and monopolization of knowledge by an elite few, so as to "... place the
researcher firmly outside and separate from the subject of his or her research, reach-
ing for an objective knowledge and for one separate truth" Reason, 1998, pp. 261-
262.
Participative, "naturalistic" inquiry with its exploratory-interpretive approaches
(Grotjhan, 1987, p. 59) is fuelled by democratic, egalitarian, and pluralist principles.
It has been broadly influenced by philosophical concepts of humanistic psychology
(Rogers, 1961), liberationist education (Freire, 1970) social phenomenology (Schutz,
1967), social constructivism (Berger & Luckman, 1966; Cicourel & Kitsuse, 1963), crit-
ical theory (Habermas, 1972) and feminist studies (Lichtenstein, 1988). It is with this
paradigm that AR is associated.
One of the early antecedents of AR in the field of educational inquiry was John
Dewey (e.g., 1904), who set out his agenda for research in terms of the centrality
of educational practices as the source of data and the ultimate test of the validity of
research findings. The concept of a distinctive focus on practice was both a challenge to
established forms of academic research and a democratization of the scope of research,
including as it did the possibility that practitioners themselves might become included
in addressing common pedagogical problems (McTaggart, 1991). Although in contrast
with the dominant themes of the time, Dewey's insistence on the practical linked to an
intellectual tradition that can be traced back to Aristotle and was to become extremely
influential in educational inquiry in the 1940s.
Much of the current representations of AR is attributed to the work of the so-
cial psychologist Kurt Lewin (1946, 1948). He is generally regarded as "the father
of action research" (Marrow, 1969; McNiff, 1988; McTaggart, 1991), although Corey
(1953) argues that the concepts and terminology had already appeared in the writings
of Collier, U.S. Commissioner for Indian Affairs, who argued for a joint approach
by researchers and administrators that was "action-research, research-action" (1945,
p. 300). Lewin's scientific experiments on the problems of social groups served as a ba-
sis for his conceptualization of research as a cyclical, action-based model that included
planning, reconnaissance, fact-finding, action, and analysis. His experimentation in
"group dynamics" emerged from a postwar era where research into social problems
was of urgent interest at a time of great societal upheaval. What distinguished this
perspective, from the predominant focus on the application of research results to prac-
tice, was the unification of theory and action. As Carr and Kemmis (1986, p. 44) put
it, it was a view that "regards theory and practice as dialectically related, with theory
being developed and tested by application in and reflection on practice." Lewin was
above all else "a practical theorist" (Marrow, 1969) whose interests lay in theories of
the facilitation of AR.
 14. ACTION RESEARCH 243

SHIFTS IN CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF AR

McTaggart (1991, p. v) characterizes the history of AR in education as a "struggle to

sustain action research practice." The story of its development from the initial impetus
of Lewin's work is perhaps best portrayed as three broad movements (cf. McKernan,
1996), during which its fortunes as a recognized research position have risen and
declined: the technical-scientific, the practical-deliberative, and the critical-emancipatory.
Elements of all three approaches still exist in current interpretations of AR (cf. Crookes,
1993).

Technical-Scientific
Corey's (1949, 1952, 1953) work with teachers in the United States represented the
first attempts to define and popularize educational AR. However, paradoxically, his
aims to make it scientifically "respectable"—by arguing for its capacity to generate
"hypotheses to be tested" (1949, p. 512), and by contrasting it with "fundamental re-
search" seeking to "generalize" and "discover the 'truth'" (1949, p. 509)—were also
the seeds of its demise. His case for AR portrayed it as essentially a technical ac-
tivity through which teachers could seek improvements to their practice. Although
proposals for AR were also developed by advocates such as Taba and Noel, they
had, according to Kemmis (1982), lost the cyclical interactions among reconnaissance,
problem-identification, and evaluation proposed by Lewin, and turned into a se-
quence of steps "which it is wise not to reverse" (Taba & Noel, 1957, p. 12).
The critiques of AR by Hodgkinson's (1957) and others as "amateur," "unsophis-
ticated," and "ungeneralizable," and the advent in the United States, and later in
Britain, of large-scale Research, Development, and Diffusion models of educational
research meant that by the late 1950s AR was effectively marginalized in the United
States.

Practical-D elib erative

The resurgence in educational AR in the 1960s and 1970s was motivated by the emer-
gence of curriculum as a field of inquiry. In particular Schwab's (e.g., 1969) work in
the United States and Stenhouse's (e.g., 1971) in Britain put practical deliberation (Reid,
1978) at the heart of the curriculum enterprise:

Practical deliberation responds to the immediate situation which is deemed problematic

from a moral perspective—there is a sense in which curriculum action must be taken to
put things right. The practical is also connected with the process rather than the products
of enquiry. (McKernan, 1996, pp. 20-21)

Stenhouse's work in the Humanities Curriculum Project (1967-72), extended by

that of his colleagues, Elliott and Adelman in the Ford Teaching Project (1972-74),
placed localized, school-based cycles of action and inquiry by teachers at the core of
curriculum development, together with the hermeneutic aspects of inquiry for un-
derstanding. "The idea is that of an educational science in which each classroom is a
laboratory, each teacher a member of the scientific community" (Stenhouse, 1975,
p. 143). Elliott (1985, 1991) argued that teaching is a moral and theoretical activ-
ity defined in terms of the realization of practitioners' context-bound values. The
subsequent publication of Schon's concepts of the Reflective Practitioner (1983) rein-
forced the centrality of the cognitive, the reflective, and the deliberative in processes
of curriculum practice. Signs of a renewed interest in action (van Manen, 1984) and
participatory (Hall, 1979) research in the United States also emerged at this time
244 BURNS

(see also Bissex & Bullock, 1987; Goswami & Stillman, 1987; Wallat, Green, Conlin, &
Haramis, 1983).

Critical-Emancipatory
From the mid-1980s, new ways of thinking about AR were developed by Kemmis and
his colleagues at Deakin University in Australia, influenced by the writings of critical
theorists including Habermas (1972), Freire (1982), and Fals Borda (1979).
Carr and Kemmis (1986, p. 203) argued that, in contrast to practical AR that focused
on individualistic judgments, "the form of action research which best embodies the
values of a critical educational science is emancipatory action research." Individual
practice should be seen as socially constituted and reflective of broad social, educa-
tional, and political interactions within the school. Through AR, a collaborative and
dialectic relationship could be created between individual and group responsibility
toward the production and implementation of common educational policies and prac-
tices. This was a transformative, resistant, and activist form of AR where "the prac-
titioner group itself takes responsibility for its own emancipation from the dictates
of irrationality, injustice, alienation and unfulfillment" (p. 204). By examining taken-
for-granted habits, rituals, customs, and precedents, as well as bureaucratic control
structures and constraints, the group could empower itself to realize in practice its own
fundamental educational values (cf. Kincheloe, 1991; Whitehead and Lomax, 1987).
Kincheloe (1991) articulates the alternative position taken by critical-emancipatory
theorists:

When the critical dimension of teacher research is negated, the teacher-as-researcher

movement can become quite a trivial enterprise. Uncritical educational action research
seeks direct applications of information gleaned to specific situations—a cookbook style
of technological thinking is encouraged... Such thinking does not allow for complex
reconceptualizations of knowledge and as a result fails to understand the ambiguities
and the ideological structures of the classroom. [In this way] teacher research is co-opted,
its democratic edge is blunted, (p. 83)

Kemmis and McTaggart's model, with its four "moments," reinvigorated Lewin's
theory of AR as a self-reflective spiral or loop:

• Plan—prospective to action, forward looking and critically informed in terms of the

recognition of real constraints, and the potential for more effective action.
• Action—deliberate and controlled, but critically informed in that it recognizes prac-
tice as ideas-in-action mediated by the material, social, and political "struggle"
toward improvement.
• Observation—responsive, but also forward looking in that it documents the critically
informed action, its effects, and its context of situation, using "open-eyed" and
"open-minded" observation plans, categories, and measurements.
• Reflection—evaluative and descriptive, in that it makes sense of the processes, prob-
lems, issues, and constraints of action and develops perspectives and comprehen-
sion of the issues and circumstances in which it arises.

(Based on Kemmis & McTaggart, 1986, pp. 11-14)

In carrying out AR, practitioners draw extensively on qualitative methods, such as

case studies, interviews, journals, and classroom observations. However, quantitative
procedures are not excluded; as Elliott and others point out, AR should not be defined
in terms of its methods (Elliott, in Introduction to McKernan, 1996, p. ix).
 14. ACTION RESEARCH 245

ACTION RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF ELT/APPLIED

LINGUISTICS: MAIN RESEARCH FINDINGS

The burgeoning interest in AR in the field of ELT is essentially a phenomenon of the

1990s. Although the field was not immune to trends in educational research, by the
late 1980s, as van Lier (1988) notes, AR had "not so far received much serious atten-
tion as a distinct style of research in language teaching" (p. 67). Nevertheless, calls
for the participation of teachers in classroom-centered research (CCR) were mounting
(Allwright, 1988; Jarvis, 1983; Long, 1983; van Lier, 1988), whereas observational and
other features of AR were already evident in research related to the classroom (e.g.,
Allen, frohlich, & Spada, 1984; Allwright, 1980; Brown, Anderson, Shillcock, & Yule,
1984; Long, Adams, Mclean, & Castanos, 1976). At the same time, the expansion of
AR activity was predicted in Breen and Candlin's (1980) proposals that curriculum
evaluation should be an integral aspect of classroom teaching and learning; Breen's
(1985) argument that the classroom was better considered not an "experimental lab-
oratory" for second language acquisition (SLA) research, but as a "social context for
language learning"; and van Lier's (1988) call for "ethnographic monitoring" of class-
room curriculum processes.
Nunan's publication, Understanding Language Classrooms (1989a), drew substan-
tially on this work, but explicitly generated an "an altered stance" (Candlin, in General
Editor's Preface) toward AR. Subtitled A Guide for Teacher-Initiated Action, it projected
research by language teachers not just as a worthwhile recommendation, but as a
serious possibility by offering:
... a particular focus on ways and means whereby teachers might investigate their own
classrooms. The intention is to provide a serious introduction to classroom research to
language professionals who do not have specialist training in research methods... it is
aimed specifically at the classroom teacher and teachers in preparation, (p. xi)

Nunan's endorsement of teacher research was underpinned by the recognition

from the late 1970s that communicative language teaching significantly altered the
role of the teacher in the curriculum process (cf. Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). The
concepts of "the learner-centered curriculum" (Burton, 1987; Nunan, 1988) and "the
teacher as curriculum developer" (Nunan, 1987) and "course designer "(Nunan, 1985)
were perhaps then most strongly articulated in the Australian Adult Migrant English
Program (AMEP; cf. Tudor, 1996, p. 21), where AR became from the late 1980s a by-
word for integrating a research orientation into the work of practitioners (Brindley,
1990; Burton, 1998; Burns, 1999; Nunan, 1990).
A further impetus to the ethos of teacher research in the ELT field came from the
distinctions made between teacher training and teacher education (Larsen-Freeman,
1983; Richards, 1987/90). Teaching as "discrete and trainable skills, such as setting
up small-group activities, using strategies for correcting pronunciation errors, using
referential questions..." reflected a low-inference, micro-perspective, in contrast to
a holistic, macro-approach of the autonomous professional capable of "clarifying and
elucidating the concepts and thinking processes that guide the effective second lan-
guage teacher" (Richards, 1990, p. 14). The reflective and research-oriented proposals
for teacher professional development contained in the collection edited by Richards
and Nunan, (1990; e.g., Pennington, 1990) were echoed by Wallace (1991), drawing
on the work of Schon (1983). Wallace drew a distinction among (1) a craft model of
teaching, where novices learn by imitating master teachers; (2) an applied science
model based on a separation of research and practice, where teachers are assumed
to implement the findings of scientific research; and (3) a reflective model, which is
246 BURNS

a combination of "received" and "experiential" knowledge, where professional com-

petence is mediated through cycles of practice and reflection. Wallace aimed to build
a coherent framework for reflective practice, of which AR could be "an extension"
(p. 57). The notion of the reflective language practitioner is now strongly endorsed
(if not universally practiced) in most discussions of language teacher development
(cf. Gebhard, 1996; Richards & Lockhart, 1994), whereas related branches of research
have focused on teacher learning (Freeman & Richards, 1996), knowledge (Freeman,
1996), and cognition (Woods, 1996).

CURRENT DEBATES: ACTION RESEARCH IN ELT

In a significant and frequently cited article, Crookes (1993) argues that two kinds of
AR are of import to the second language field. The first, underpinned by "the teacher
as researcher " movement in education (cf. Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990; Strickland,
1988), is a (nominally) value-free and conservative version; the second follows a more
radically progressive, critical, and emancipatory line (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Gore &
Zeichner, 1991). Research of the second kind, Crookes states, "has gone almost without
representation in SL [second language] discussions of this topic" (p. 133).
An analysis of much of the published literature on AR over the last decade con-
firms Crookes' argument. Although this is perhaps a facet of the newness of action
research in the field and uncertainty, or even rejection, of its viability as a valid re-
search approach (cf. the discussions on the status of qualitative research in general in
the field of SLA, e.g. Lazaraton, 1995; McCarthy, 2001), the majority of publications are
concerned with outlining various versions of the AR process and/or providing (usu-
ally individually based) illustrative case studies (e.g., Bailey & Nunan, 1996; Edge
& Richards, 1993; Nunan, 1989b; Wallace, 1998). Where collaboration between re-
searchers and teachers takes place, there is a tendency for it to be of the "flying visit"
(Breen, Candlin, Dam, & Gabrielsen, 1989) variety. Also, despite the arguments that
action research provides a "voice" for teachers, collective accounts of AR written by
classroom teachers, who would not also consider themselves academics or teacher
educators, do not yet figure prominently, with some exceptions (e.g. the reports in
Burns & Hood, 1995,1998; Burns & de Silva Joyce, 2000; Edge, 2001; Richards, 1998).
Allwright (1993, p. 125), for example, has argued for "exploratory teaching"
(cf. Allwright & Bailey, 1991) as an alternative to action research. He suggests that
in the rush to advocate AR, "teachers face the risk of discovering the hard way that
research can be an unacceptable burden to add to those they are already suffering
from in their daily lives as classroom teachers" (p. 25). He argues that exploratory
teaching is capable of greater sustainability than AR. Exploratory teaching differs by
exploiting normal pedagogical activities to explore issues that "puzzle" teachers and
learners. The focus is on understanding to promote more effective teaching, rather than
on problem-solving. His work with teachers in Brazil (Allwright & Lenzuen, 1997) gen-
erated a series of procedures: 1) identify a puzzle area, 2) refine your thinking about
that puzzle area, 3) select a particular topic to focus on, 4) find appropriate classroom
procedures to explore it, 5) adapt them to the particular puzzle you want to explore, 6)
use them in class, 7) interpret the outcomes, 8) decide on their implications and plan
accordingly. However, Allwright's model appears to follow fairly closely some of the
major processes of action research, while at the same time apparently disallowing the
status of research to teachers' investigative activities.
Freeman's (1998, p. ix) discussion of teacher research is also influenced by his
work in Brazil, as well as in Masters' programs he taught in the United States. Like
Allwright, he examines how research can fit within the work of teaching and transform
it through increased understanding. His aim is to "connect the 'doing' of teaching with
 14. ACTION RESEARCH 247

the 'questioning' of research" (p.ix). Although he raises the possibility that "teachers
will redefine the territory of their work/' Freeman's interest presents as essentially
individualist—the "presentation of how teacher-research can be done, and . . . the
assertion that teacher-research has a fundamental role in redefining the knowledge-
base of teaching" (pp. ix-x). Nevertheless, the publication is among one of the first
full-length treatments of the topic to be interspersed with a series of accounts of action
research written by teachers (see also Wallace, 1998).
Publications by Wallace (1998) and Burns (1999) are the first book-length treatments
in ELT to explicitly foreground the term "action research" in their titles. Wallace's
discussion builds from his earlier theme (1991) of "reflection on our professional
practice" (p. 1), but its focus is on providing concrete procedures for the individual
teacher-researcher:

If you are a practicing teacher with a keen interest in professional development you might
like to consider the action research approach presented here. If you do, hopefully you
will find certain of the techniques described to be of some practical use. (Wallace, 1991,
P-D

In line with Crookes' argument, there are strong echoes here of the technicist and
practical versions of teacher research. Burns attempts to depart from this approach
and to shift toward a more critical stance by illustrating how AR can be integrated into
ongoing collaborative teacher development processes that can create the conditions
to support and influence institutional change. It also departs from other versions
of researcher-teacher collaboration in that the participating researchers can be said
to share "member's competence" (Linde, personal communication, cited in Woods,
1996) with the teachers, since they all work within the same Australian educational
system. Roberts (1998), commenting on earlier work (Burns & Hood, 1995) that led to
this publication, notes that:

... it shows the need for teachers' curriculum inquiry to be a genuine part of their work,
and for their insights to be seen to contribute to larger-scale change. It would seem to
be highly consistent with our preferred framework for [language teacher education]...
in that it highlights the exchange between individual development and its social con-
text; positive relationships and opportunities for critical dialogue; and a consistent link
between a person's work and the landscape in which it takes place, (p. 288)

Nevertheless, this work—in common with other examples, such as the AR car-
ried out with Indian teachers investigating pedagogical change within moves to a
communicative curriculum (Mathew & Lalitha Eapen, 1996), with Australian foreign
language teachers' researching their classroom practice (Mickan, 1996), and with sec-
ondary teachers in Hong Kong aiming to develop greater professional competence
and status (Tinker Sachs, 2000)—is probably closer to what Kemmis (1993) describes
as co-operative AR.
According to Kemmis it is possible to identify a continuum of types of collaboration:
co-option relationships, where the research is owned by the researchers; co-operative,
where teachers work with researchers who share an interest in and facilitate their
practice and often report it collaboratively; and collaborative, where researchers and
teachers (or teachers working together) participate equally in the research agenda and
are both the agents and the objects of the research. The latter type is still rare in cur-
rent activities in the ELT field, although participatory research of the type conducted
by Auerbach, Arnaud, Chandler, & Zambrano (1998), where researchers worked in
a university-community collaboration with immigrants and refugees who became
adult ESL and native language literacy instructors in their own communities, offers
248 BURNS

an example (see also Auerbach, 1994). While not explicitly called AR, this exam-
ple perhaps comes closest to what could be considered both fully collaborative and
critical-emancipatory in orientation in the language teaching field.
Elements of a more critical orientation to AR, located within a holistic and ecological
interpretation of language education, are also to be found in van Lier's (1996) discus-
sion of awareness, autonomy, and authenticity in the language curriculum. Van Lier
argues that actions in the cyclical stages of action research and the purposes for which
they were developed:

... beg large questions which are likely to take action research in critical directions,
particularly if the teacher researcher moves from a problem-solving... to a problem-
posing approach, which looks at the classroom as a historically evolving and culturally
embedded system, (p. 34)

Advocating a critical rather than a technical approach, Van Lier aligns his position
with that of Candlin (1993), who distinguishes between "weak" and "strong" ver-
sions of AR, and Crookes (1993). He views supportive collaboration between teacher
researchers as central, together with an interactive interpretation of the cyclical nature
of AR where cycles and steps are "simultaneous strands that are braided together as
one goes along" (p. 34; cf. Burns, 1999). A further conceptual point is that reflection
is not a one-off event but a process that pervades AR activity—a "way of working"
(Kemmis & McTaggart, 1986) rather than a time-bound project.
As this brief description implies, current interpretations of action research vary
along a practical-critical continuum. Both types are valuable to the field of language
teaching, but it is arguable that the radical and collaborative forms of action re-
search are likely to have the greater impact on renewing practice at its "grass-roots"
(cf. Crookes, 1989; van Lier, 1996). This point will be further elaborated in the final
section of this chapter.

The Scope of Action Research Studies

Published studies of AR in ELT are still relatively small in number. In general two types
of accounts are the most common: those written by academic researchers who have
introduced action research as a component of BATESOL/MATESOL (Bachelor's and
Master's in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and other university
programs and who sometimes report on action research on behalf of their students
or colleagues; and those written by individual teacher-researchers, sometimes as the
result of projects carried out for tertiary qualifications. A third, and less common type,
is the reporting by teachers of AR conducted for their own professional development
within a larger collaborative grouping.
Tsui (1996) exemplifies the first type. Tsui worked with 38 practising ESL teachers
enrolled in the Postgraduate Certificate in Education program at the University of
Hong Kong. The teachers video or audio recorded their lessons and reviewed the
tapes to identify their own problem areas for investigation. More than 70% identified
student reticence and anxiety about responding in English in the classroom as a major
issue. The teachers tried out different strategies, kept a diary of their observations
and reflections, and wrote evaluative reports. Other examples of this type of AR are
Thorne and Qiang (1996), Markee (1997), and Crookes and Chandler (1999).
A study conducted by Cowie (2001) illustrates the second category of reporting.
Cowie describes a 3-year process during which he investigated the most effective ways
to teach writing in his undergraduate classes in the liberal arts faculty of a Japanese
public university. His investigations led him to revise his teaching approaches, but also
to deepen his knowledge about conducting research. Calling his approach "not action
 14. ACTION RESEARCH 249

research, but I'm getting there," his account highlights the nature of the processes and
insights that can become significant for teacher researchers. Brousseau (1996) and
Gersten and Tlusty (1998) also exemplify studies of this second type.
McPherson's (1997) study illustrates action research carried out as part of a large-
scale collaborative AR process on disparate learner groups involving 26 Australian
teachers. She traces the evolution of her understanding of the social dynamics oper-
ating in the classroom that initially impeded effective communicative teaching and
learning. Through three successive cycles of AR, the intervention strategies she intro-
duced enabled more effective student-teacher relationships and classroom activities.
McPherson points out that the collaborative elements of the research were a crucial
factor in its cyclical development. Mathew (2000) and Tinker Sachs (2002) provide
further examples of this type.
While not specifically drawing on the conceptual frameworks of AR or labeling
themselves as such, many other studies published over the last decade in more ped-
agogically oriented journals, such as the English Language Teaching Journal, English
Language Forum or TESOL Journal, could be classified as action research, as could
several of the studies regularly reported in collections of papers, such as the Hong
Kong Working Papers in ELT or Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German. Many of
the short teacher-research studies published in Richards (1998) that illustrate how
teachers identify and resolve a teaching issue reflect a very strong action research ori-
entation. The latter publication is of interest in that it is unlikely that these localized
and small-scale studies would have seen the light of day had they not been solicited
for publication by the editor (through the International TESOL Association).

CRITIQUES OF ACTION RESEARCH (AND SOME

POSSIBLE RESPONSES)

I have portrayed AR in positive terms and, indeed, evidence of the positive effects
of action research in teachers' professional lives is growing, as exemplified in the
following:

The collaborative approach to the project provided regular contact with peers and oppor-
tunities to share idea and experiences. This aspect of the project cannot be undervalued.
The project provided me with an opportunity to examine my teaching practices and re-
visit some to the practices I used in the past whose value I had forgotten. (O'Keeffe, 2001,
p. 57)

However, as a form of research it is not without critics. Jarvis (1981) voiced early
doubts about the capacity of teachers to do research, arguing that it was an activity
best left to specialists and that, in any case, action research was without academic
prestige. The latter argument still dogs AR, although its more recent prominence in
the field is causing a gradual reevaluation of its status (cf. Richards, 2001). Part of the
reason for lack of prestige are doubts about its rigor:

Certainly research by teachers, for teachers, on their processes of teaching can only be
a good thing. But if obtaining a clearer understanding of teaching processes requires
care and rigour in other modes of research, there is no good argument for action research
producing less care and rigour unless it is less concerned with clear understanding, which
it is not. (Brumfit & Mitchell, 1989, p. 9)

Brumfit and Mitchell's points provoke a number of key questions: What are the stan-
dards by which AR is to be judged and should these be the same as for other forms of
research? Should it conform to existing academic criteria? What ethical considerations
25O BURNS

need to be brought to bear on research that is highly contextualized in practice? How

should action research be reported? What tensions exist between the quality of action
research and its sustainability by practitioners? (See Allwright, 1997 and Nunan, 1997
for recent discussion of these issues.)
Even promoters of action research, sometimes seem to have doubts about its status.
Wallace (1991) states, "'Research' of this kind is simply an extension of the normal
reflective practices of many teachers, but it is slightly more rigorous and might con-
ceivably lead to more effective outcomes (p. 17)."
Although it might be unintended, the use of scare quotes positions AR in contrast
to "real" research, albeit as preferable to more usual unstructured forms of thinking
about teaching. Wallace's more recent account (1998) situates action research in re-
lation to the reflective cycle as a component of "professional development strategies
(excluding 'conventional research')" (p. 14). As with case study and other forms of
qualitative research, issues of the legitimacy (cf. Bourdieu, 1991) of action and practi-
tioner research are likely to go on being contested for some time.
A possible response to some of these questions is provided by Crookes (1993)
and Freeman (1998), who argue that accurate and fair ways of representing what
teachers find in their research will require unconventional new discourses and genres.
In developing them, it will be the meaningfulness and trustworthiness (Mishler, 1990)
of the research that becomes paramount. A central question will be: To what extent
does this research resonate with my understandings of practice and have meaning
in my context? Similarly, Bailey (1998) suggests that AR should not be judged by the
traditional criteria of random selection, generalizability, and replicability, as its goals
are to establish local understandings. In short, it is likely that AR practitioners will
need to confront the challenge "to define and meet standards of appropriate rigor
without sacrificing relevance" (Argyris & Schon, 1978, p. 85).
Other concerns and critiques relate to the over-involvement of the action researcher,
leading to personal bias; the time constraints posed by longitudinal research; the
double burden of teaching and research; the lack of models and procedures for data
analysis (cf. Winter, 1989); and question marks over accountability in experimentation
with learner subjects (cf. Hitchcock & Hughes, 1995; Tinker Sachs, 2000).
Perhaps one of the strongest features of action research that can contribute to en-
hancing rigor is its iterative, or cyclical, nature. Iterations in the cycle, where initial
insights and findings give way to new, but related, questions and data collection can
serve to (a) build on evidence from previous cycles; (b) expand the scope of the study;
(c) triangulate the data across different episodes, sites, and subjects through multi-
ple data sources; (d) test new findings against previous iterations of the cycle; and
(e) avoid the bias inherent in cross-sectional research. The iterative aspect becomes
particularly powerful when research is conducted collaboratively, as findings and
outcomes can be cross-referenced across multiple activities.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Second language acquisition studies have been a major force in the field of ELT.
However, over the last few decades the focus of SLA research has been predominantly
on theoretical concerns (see the discussions in the thematic issues of Applied Linguistics,
1993). More recently, calls have been made from those both within and outside the
SLA field for a shift to research generated from the classroom and from the perspective
of practitioners. This, it is argued, will raise "the silent voices" of teachers and shape
SLA research more realistically in the direction of actual practice (Zephir, 2000). Ellis,
himself a major figure in SLA research, has recently stated the case for AR, describing
his own shifts in thinking:
 14. ACTION RESEARCH 251

As I left the classroom... I began to treat SLA as an object of enquiry in its own right.
That is I began to pay less attention to how the results of research... might aid lan-
guage pedagogy and more attention to trying to produce good research... Increasingly,
though, I have had to recognize that the gap between what second language acquisition
researchers do and what teachers do has grown wider and that the former spend an in-
creasing amount of time talking to each other in a language only they understand. (Ellis,
1997, pp. vii-viii)

There are two major ways in which AR can potentially invigorate the field of ELT:
the first can be termed socioconstructivist and the second sociopolitical.
Action research offers a means for teachers to become agents rather than recipients
of knowledge about second language teaching and learning, and thus to contribute
toward the building of educational theories of practice (Bourdieu, 1990). Changes in
the cultures of teaching and learning English, themselves the subject of global changes
in industrialized societies, means that, in the near future at least, the relevance of
AR is set to expand. The nature of knowledge as abstract, decontextualized, and
prepositional is increasingly being questioned in this field as elsewhere. Illustrations
of collaborative AR as a process of literate knowledge building within a collaborative
"community of inquiry" have been offered by Wells & Chang-Wells (1992), whose
work with school teachers in Canada over a period of 3 years led to significant changes
in teachers' practices. Thinking about teaching as communal, inquiry-oriented action
rather than as individual classroom practice represents a significant shift for current
models of teacher education.
In the future, professional knowledge building in teacher education is also likely
to connect the practical and theoretical skills needed by teachers with their underpin-
ning morals and values. AR allows for a social-constructivist approach, that is, one that
integrates the individual development of teachers' knowledge with the specific social
situations and local contexts in which they work. This is an approach embedded in
an ecological perspective (see van Lier, e.g. 1997) where close attention is paid to con-
textual analysis, the actions, discourses, and perceptions of the people in the context
and the patterns that connect them, as well as the "nested ecosystems" (Bronfonbren-
ner, 1979) that move analysis from the micro contexts of the classroom to the macro
contexts beyond.
Aligned with these broadened contextual perspectives are the political possibilities
for AR, (although it would be naive in the extreme not to acknowledge the potential for
AR to be co-opted for bureaucratic or political purposes). As teacher researchers gain
a voice, the socio-political and critical aspects of their work may also be strengthened.
McNiff (1988, p. 72) sees this as an inevitable consequence—"politics will intrude."
Although this development may well set action researchers at odds with established
educational systems, it could also be a powerful force for changing and improving
existing unsatisfactory language teaching situations. For example, Ferguson (1998) de-
scribes how she lobbied for continuation of her adult ESL class in the face of previously
unrevealed bureaucratic decisions to cut funds. Although not specifically termed crit-
ical AR, her comments on her newly gained political insights might well be:

We, as ESL practitioners, can look at our field of work and easily say, "It's hopeless!" The
inadequacies in the field are great: in recognition of the need for ESL service for adults, in
funding for service delivery, in amount of services available, in employment opportunities
for teachers and so on and on. However, we can just as easily say, "It's wide open!" There is
so much room for improvement that small actions towards building political visibility can
be significant. Any expertise we gain is valuable. Any progress we make is laudable, (p. 13)

To whatever extent future trends in AR incorporate some of the directions fore-

shadowed here, it seems inevitable that it will become instrumental in forging new
252 BURNS

relationships between academic researchers and teachers in our field, and in giving
rise to new paradigms for research in which practitioners will have a much greater
role to play.

CONCLUSION

This brief overview of the philosophical and theoretical antecedents, developments,

and central characteristics of AR inevitably covers only some of the ground. As an
approach that appears to excite and stimulate teachers and teacher educators alike,
it will be of great interest to the field of ELT to see how AR contributes to profes-
sional development and research in the coming decades. It is hoped that, we can look
forward to stronger and more genuinely collaborative partnerships between teachers
and researchers, and as teachers gain confidence in their research skills, to a greater
number of accounts of practitioner research in the ELT literature.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to Kathi Bailey, Graham Crookes, and Leo van Lier for their invalu-
able comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this chapter.

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