The Language Teacher

These reactions, based on beliefs resulting from stereotypes about "research" and "researchers," are understandable. These beliefs derive from popular generalizations about what research is. There is "Research," with a capital "R," which I use to refer to empirical studies, with control and experimental groups, such as those reported on in journals like the TESOL Quarterly. There is also "research," with a small "r," to designate the studies and projects which can be carried out by classroom teachers without training in statistical analysis. Both forms can be viewed as classroom-centered research (CCR).

This overview will, first of all, define classroom centered research. Secondly, a brief historical survey of classroom research (with the capital R) will show that the initial impetus for CCR came from the fields of second language acquisition (SLA) and the training and development of teachers. This will be followed by a brief introduction to action research. I will focus on the value of research (with the small r) for teachers in Japan, in particular with reference to curriculum renewal and on-going professional development. These are two areas of major interest to junior and senior high school teachers who face the task of implementing the new Monbusho Courses of Study for English language education. An argument will be made throughout this article that CCR is a means to empower teachers and make them more effective decision makers about what goes on in their classrooms.

Definition of Classroom Centered Research

According to Allwright and Bailey (1991), CCR concentrates on classroom interaction what-- goes on between and among teachers and students--in order to gain insights and increase our understanding of classroom learning and teaching. Examples include how teachers ask questions and correct errors, what effect the type of task might have on learning, and whether reading aloud or silent reading in class results in more learning.

CCR draws its research methodologies from a variety of social sciences--anthropology, interaction analysis--as well as from domains related to linguistics such as discourse analysis and the ethnography of communication. It is unusual to have carefully controlled experiments such as those one finds in psychology, for example. As the main focus of CCR is on classroom interaction, the research seeks data in the form of both verbal and non-verbal behaviors for analysis to describe, explain, and predict the role of formal classroom instruction in language learning.

Data collection can take several forms. Chaudron (1988) outlines four research traditions in CCR: psychometric, interaction analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnographic. Of these, it is the first one, the psychometric tradition, which is the most quantitative, involving statistical analysis of numerical data. The other three approaches are more likely to be within the qualitative paradigm, yet may include the counting of numbers of times the teacher talks, for example, thus providing a quantitative dimension. There are two important points which need to be stated in this context: (1) The research method depends on what is most appropriate for one's research question, and (2) both quantitative and qualitative approaches are needed. Classroom teachers need not be discouraged from the start, thinking that Research requires one to use inferential statistics. A solid ethnography of a classroom may be more appropriate to capture, for example, how learners work in groups to improve their language competence; this is an example of the kind of research, with the small "r," which can be done by classroom practitioners.

History of Classroom Centered Research

Classroom research is not specific to language teaching, having developed in the 1950s in the United States and Britain in an effort to gain insights into what constitutes effective teaching and then to utilize the findings in teacher training. This function of CCR became generalized to the language classroom, particularly due to the loss of confidence in the early 1970s in the notion that there was one perfect method which would enable all learners to become successful users of a second/foreign language. The audio lingual method and the grammar-translation approach were compared, and at the end of a two-year trial period, n, o significant differences were found (see Scherer and Wertheimer, 1964). Applied linguists then began to search for other variables in the language classroom which might have a role in effective language learning, and this led to the logical next step of seeking to describe as accurately as possible just what happens in the classroom.

Focusing on the way language is used in classrooms (see, for example, Lemke, 1989) takes the researcher into the area of second language acquisition (SLA) as well as teacher development. Research based on data collected in classrooms can lead to insights into language acquisition/ learning processes, whereas, from a teacher development perspective, observation and then description of classroom variables is seen as helping pre- and in-service teachers to develop their skills as well as their understanding about the nature of teaching and learning. Description helps the teacher avoid taking a prescriptive perspective on practices.

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"Action research is...seen as being small scale and situational...focused on a particular problem, to try to undetand and perhaps solve some concrete problem in. . .[the]. . .classroom."

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Still another perspective is a sociological one which views the classroom as a microcosm or "socially-constructed event," where the teacher and learners interact as social beings. In this view, aspects of the wider sociocultural context within which the classroom is situated are to be analyzed, and the focus shifts from the teacher to the learner, who is seen as an important contributor and organizer of the learning environment. This perspective takes the researcher into the community and the society as a whole to look at the wider domain in which formal education functions.

While most research projects focus on specific variables (for example, error correction, turn distribution, learner behavior), in fact a multidimensional approach is possible. A study of error correction, for example, requires linguistic analysis of the learners' contributions as well as interaction analysis of teacher-learner behavior.

A more recent focus of CCR (Allwright and Bailey, 1991) is a concern about observational tools and a search for data-collection and analytic tools suitable for teachers. There has been a movement away from engaging outside experts to carry out "Research" in classrooms towards making "research" more accessible to classroom practitioners. In the next section, I will describe an approach to carrying out small research studies, called action research.

Action Research

What is "action research"? How does it differ from CCR? Action research is one form of CCR which is seen as being small scale and situational, that is, focused on a particular problem, to try to understand and perhaps solve some concrete problem in an individual teacher's classroom. It is defined as "ideas-inaction" and is generally not done by an outside expert, but by actual classroom teachers during normal, everyday activities. It can be carried out by a group of teachers who decide to cooperate, and thus is collaborative, or can be done by one teacher.

Action research tends to be directly linked to achieving results in the classroom setting. The experimental dimen-sion is present: The teacher changes one thing and then observes the effects of the change. This should lead to improvements in practice. The ultimate aim is for action research to become part of the general attitude of the teacher, leading the teacher to become "reflective" or introspective about classroom practices (Nunan, 1989). Such a teacher-as-researcher is constantly reflecting on her/his practices, experimenting, evaluating the effects of the experiment, and then changing her/his practices if the effects are positive.

Action research thus is not research with a capital "R," nor is it done by an expert alone. It focuses on what works best with students in a particular setting. However, this does not mean there is no "theory." The word "theory" tends to distance teachers, yet human beings engage in theorizing every day. One way of looking at theory is to understand it as speculations about cause and effect that are backed by logic. Every time we stop to think about why something has or has not happened, we engage in theory making. There are expert theories, such as those by scholars like Einstein and Chomsky, and theories of classroom practitioners. An example of a teacher's theory which could form the basis for action research, is that calling on learners by name in class will cause them to participate more.

We can find examples of expert theories in work done on learner strategies; we can read researchers' ideas and theories on learner strategies based on experiments they have carried out. As classroom teachers, and based on experiences as learners ourselves, we also have "theories," called "non-expert" theories, about strategies Japanese learners of English use. We can decide to investigate just what the students do in our own classes. This is what action research is: a focused project we do in our own classrooms, with our own students.

Part of the goal of action research, then, is to make teachers aware of their own theories, which may be unconscious or at least unexamined. It is only awareness which leads us to control our teaching behavior and to possibilities of change.

Nunan (1989) provides a checklist, adapted from Cohen and Manion (1985, pp. 220-221), for action research projects:

1. Identify a problem. It is important that the problem be narrow and focused.

2. Develop a plan to carry out the research, discussing and negotiating with other teachers, advisors, and outside experts.

3. Review at least some of what has already been written about the issue in question.

4. Restate the problem in the form of a hypothesis or research question; discuss the assumptions underlying the research project.

5. Select research procedures, materials, resources, etc.

6. Choose the best way to evaluate your results.

7. Collect data, analyze it, and evaluate your project.

8. Interpret the data and feed the information and insights back into your own teaching and to others, perhaps in the form of a workshop or a written report.

Data Collection and Analysis

Step seven on Nunan's list is a particularly important one: data collection and then analysis of the data. It is important to collect data which will provide the kind of information necessary to obtain useful results. There are different means to obtain a record of what happens in the classroom. Most are qualitative instruments:

(a) direct observational data: audio or video tape classroom behavior; field notes of observers;

(b) self reports in the form of surveys, questionnaires, checklists, diaries or journals, and interviews with teachers and learners.

In addition, quantitative data collection can be carried out. For example, it is possible to count the amount of time it takes for students to respond to the teacher's questions (wait time), the types of questions asked by the teacher vs. the students, the amount of time teachers talk, to give just a few examples. Preand post-tests of students' proficiency before and after using a particular set of materials to look for change and progress may be used. It may also be possible to set up more elaborate experimental projects, although it has to be remembered that action research is anchored in what classroom teachers can do essentially on their own.

Once data have been collected, then the record of classroom behavior has to be analyzed. This may require that a transcription be prepared in the case of audio or video tapes of lessons. The major analytic tool is the use of observation schedules: lists of categories of classroom behaviors (e.g., asking questions, eliciting responses, praising, explaining) to classify teacher/learner behavior. There are a variety of such observation schedules, the earliest being The Language reacher 18:2 Flander's 1970 work, "Interaction Analysis," and then more recent ones such as Fanselow's FOCUS (1987) and the Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) category system. A recent development is the addition of discourse analysis as one of the methodologies for micro analysis, particularly of transcriptions. The analytic tools have become increasingly sophisticated in the effort to provide more appropriate procedures.

The Expert and the Language Teacher

Just where does all this bring us? Can the classroom teacher do serious research? Or isn't it really only the domain of the expert?

There are no easy answers to these questions. This overview itself is cursory and presents only a schema of the territory of classroom research. The bibliography at the end gives some suggestions of where one can start to read in order to secure a deeper understanding of CCR. Not a few experts in applied linguistics and in second language acquisition would argue that small-scale, action research projects cannot be termed "research." Yet others take the point of view that engaging in action research by classroom teachers is useful in developing a reflective, analytic approach to teaching. The main purpose of such research is to provoke thought about what happens in the classroom. Action research projects must, however, stop short of making strong claims about the validity of the results.

Here in Japan, the new Courses of Study from the Ministry of Education have been causing understandable concern among English language teachers. The new curricula are vague and without clear guidelines as to how to implement the revised aims and objectives. In addition to informing themselves through reading in certain fields of applied linguistics, junior and senior high school teachers may find that small action research projects may help them decide how to make the new Courses of Study come alive in their classrooms. This attempt at curriculum renewal can be seen as an opportunity for teachers to play a stronger role once they accept the need to be more actively engaged in the classroom learning environment.

Conclusion

As a tool for professional development, CCR, in the form of small, action research studies, can be very effective. It is through the process of carrying out small studies that the teacher becomes more aware of the classroom as a learning environment, and this awareness empowers the teacher to become a more effective decision maker about what goes on in the classroom. Research, with a small "r," is a way of helping teachers to help themselves.

Here are some examples of action research projects which have been done in Japanese English language classes. These are the kinds of questions which classroom teachers have posed and attempted to answer in the context of English language teaching.

1. If I introduce a greater variety of listening tasks, will the students' listening skills improve?

2. Which results in more learning, the deductive or inductive approach to teaching grammar?

3. Can TOEFL scores be improved by having students do more listening, take more practice tests, or memorize more vocabulary and grammar rules?

4. What can I do to keep disruptive students quiet in class?

5. Where and when can I use more English in senior high school language classes?

6. Is there a correlation between the amount of learning going on in my classroom and teacher's questions and students' talking time?

7. Is there a correlation between and among turn taking, interruptions, and the gender of students in pair work in my class?

8. What strategies do students use when they have to read and find answers to comprehension questions in a limited time?

Action research can help both teachers and learners (they can be involved as well) recognize how fascinating a classroom is, and how complex the process of learner a language.

References

Allwright, D. (1988). Observaction in the language classroom. London: Longman.

Allwright, D., & sailey KM. (1991). Focus on the language classroom: an introduction to classroom research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bell J. (1987). Doing your research project. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Chaudron, C. (1988). Second language classrooms: research on teaching and learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, L., & Manion, L (1985). Research methods in education. 2nd edition. London: Croom Helm.

Fanselow, J. (1987). Breaking rules: generating and exploring alternatives in language teaching. New York: Longrnan. Flanders, N.A. (1970). Analyzing teaching behavior. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Hopkins, D. (1985). A teacher's guide to classroom research. Milton Keynes: Open university Press.

Lernke, J.L (1989). Using language in the classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McNiff, J. (1988). Action research: principles and practice. London: Macmillan Education.

Nunan, D. (1989). Understanding language classrooms: a guide for teacher-initiated action. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Nunan, D. (1992). Research methods in language leaning. Cambridge: Cambndge University Press.

Scherer, G.A.C., & Wereimer, M. (1964). A psycho linguistic experiment in foreign language learning. New York: McGraw 11.

Sinclair, J.M., & Coulard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse. London: Oxford University Press.