Teachers, Research and Methodology Textbooks
I’ve just returned from the ELTRIA conference at the University of Barcelona on the theme of bridging the gap between research and practice. Scott Thornbury spoke there about an interesting line of inquiry he has initiated looking into how methodology textbook writers construct their texts. One particular issue he looked at (based on the sample of four authors that he interviewed) was the extent to which methodology authors draw on research and there were some interesting quotes on this issue. You can see the talk he gave at IATEFL 2017 on this topic here.
Thornbury’s starting point in his inquiry is the claim that teachers do not read research and this, as well as some aspects of his presentation, has generated much online commentary such as here and (quite critically) here.There has also been an interesting discussion of the topic on Thornbury’s blog at and I’ve added my own thoughts to that discussion.
How teachers engage (or don’t engage, rather) with published research is a topic I have discussed elsewhere, such as my blog here. My basic position remains that research (which is normally taken to mean academic research) is not written for teachers and teachers do not normally have access to it (even if they wanted to read it), so saying that most teachers do not read research is for me a factual comment and should never be a criticism. If we want ELT teachers to engage more with research, investment is needed to support the process of mediation through which accessible summaries of research are produced and made freely available to teachers. Even this would not resolve all of the challenges associated with teacher research engagement – teachers’ working conditions are often such that motivation for professional development is stifled and in other cases teachers will have more pressing needs, such as improving their English. However, the availability of accessible summaries of pedagogically-relevant research would I think go some way to addressing the continuing (though perfectly normal) gap between academic publications and what teachers do.