The Language Teacher

Report on a Lecture by Dr. Graham Crookes: "Action Research" John Boyle

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Editor's note: The following is a report based on a lecture given the weekend of October 4th at Temple University by Dr. Graham Crookes of the University of Hawaii as part of Temple University's Distinguished Lecture Series.The interpretations, conclusions,and accuracy of the report are solely the responsibility of the writer, not Dr. Crookes. TLT encourages submissions of reports of this kind on contemporary discussions of language teaching.

Action Research, says Graham Crookes, is "learning by doing." With these words began a weekend of exploration into a topic that provides plenty of opportunity for teachers to not only do and learn more about their teaching methods but also to promote change beyond their classrooms.

The October 4­5 weekend seminar was part of Temple University Japan's Distinguished Lecturer Series, which brings--as the name suggests--some of the most distinguished names in the field of ESL/EFL and applied linguistics to the university's Tokyo and Osaka campuses. The two-day workshops are free for the first three hours, after which those wishing to remain for the weekend pay the tuition fee and take the course for elective credit towards Temple's M.Ed. or Ed.D. programs, or simply for professional development.

Crookes is well known for his work on aspects of tasks in SLA, some of it done jointly with Michael Long. Although recently focusing on Action Research (AR), also called "teacher research" or "practitioner research," he has published scholarly work in a wide range of areas, including the role of planning in interlanguage development, second language speech production, theory-building in SLA, motivation and methodology. He has also been a section co-editor for the TESOL Quarterly.

Crookes' unassuming style of lecturing encouraged lively, yet guided, discussion over the two days and confirmed that he is sincerely interested in helping fellow educators pursue the possibilities of AR.

Although definitions of AR are as varied as its long history, Crookes outlined its common characteristics: AR is small scale and localized; it is evaluative and reflective; it can be collaborative in nature; and data gathered provides the impetus for change.

Two types of AR were described: that which simply aims to improve classroom methods, and that which aims more broadly to address social and cultural aspects of education (which might even include efforts to research and improve teachers' poor working conditions). The former is, as Crookes says, really nothing more than what good teachers are doing all the time: engaging in a process of reflective practice to improve their own teaching. The latter considers a wider perspective: it might include attempting to improve teachers' conditions by, for example, lobbying the school for more prep time. As action researchers, teachers should aim not just to publish academic articles but also improve their working conditions.

Crookes gave several examples of AR in action. A group called XTAR has an Internet home page <http://www.ced.appstate.edu/xtar> as a base for teacher researchers to share their inquiries, findings, insights, problems, and suggestions with colleagues in schools and universities all over the world.

On a larger, institutionalized scale, the Australian Migrant Education Programme (AMEP) has incorporated AR. In the example Crookes gave, a teacher kept a journal of her observations of her class. Problems which surfaced through these observations were discussed with fellow teachers, students, and eventually outside researchers. An important part of AR is its practical purpose: teachers intervene in an educational setting with the intent of improving some aspect of it.

In the AMEP example, one early intervention--dividing a non-homogenous class into levels of ability--merely served to create problems of self-esteem among the students. However, this initial failure provided the basis for further discussion and an alternative intervention. Thus, while AR seeks solutions to practical problems, the outcome--favorable or otherwise--is merely another step in a dynamic, ongoing process.

AR is also a social process, which made it particularly appropriate in a program like AMEP, whose purpose was to help unemployed people find work. Indeed, AR has a social history, says Crookes, who gave a brief history, starting with movements to promote social change in Germany in the 1930s, continuing through the social engineering projects in the U.S. in the 1950s (when the popular thinking among researchers was that teachers couldn't be trusted to do research), and inculding to AR's inclusion in recent projects like the above-mentioned AMEP in Australia.

There were numerous opportunities for discussion throughout the weekend seminar. Together and in small groups, participants discussed such topics as inservice training and how to go about getting it started at one's school, methods such as peer coaching, in which teachers share techniques, possibly exchange and discuss audio tapes of their teaching and provide each other with emotional support.

The latter part of Saturday evening was spent working on ideas for AR projects. Participants doing the seminar for credit had the choice of either carrying out some AR at their school or doing a feasibility study on AR and inservice training at their institution. Ideas generated were shared among the whole group, with Crookes providing valuable feedback and advice: for example, as a first move to gather comprehensive information, one interview with a key "stakeholder" (which may include students, school administration, or fellow teachers) is often better than a lot of questionnaires to a lot of people.

The second day of the seminar opened with the often-heard criticism from members of the traditional research community that AR is not "real research." What they are talking about, says Crookes, is validity. While social science research relies on method for its validity, practitioner research (i.e., AR) seeks to satisfy different criteria. Several of these types of validity, such as democratic validity (whether the research is done in collaboration with all the stakeholders) and outcome validity (whether the intervention leads to a resolution of the problem under study), were discussed. Knowledge of these are useful, says Crookes, for arming oneself against those who would downplay the importance of practitioner research.

Like all research, AR relies on the gathering and analyzing of data. The interview example was provided and, after a brief introduction to interviewing techniques, the class broke up into small groups for practice. The following whole-group discussion revealed, among other things, that it is important not to interrupt the interviewee, even if he or she seems to be rambling (everything the interviewee says may turn out to be important) and that what works for some cultures, such as looking the interviewee in the eye, may cause anxiety in others (in Japan, for example).

Whether the practitioner researcher's data are gathered from interviews, questionnaires, or in-class observations, they must be organized to be analyzed. Using short compositions written by teachers on the topic of AR and in-house training, seminar participants engaged in a data coding exercise. Data coding can be approached both deductively (organizing according to predetermined categories) and inductively (organizing based on what emerges from the data)--a reminder that, while we may have our own preconceived ideas as we begin our AR, the other stakeholders have some of their own. This creates the need for constant reevaluation of the problem, and it shows the ongoing nature of AR; in seeking answers we will surely find new questions.

Since AR cannot be thoroughly covered in two days, participants were provided with an extensive reading list. An introduction to AR such as this weekend seminar should leave teachers feeling good for at least two reasons: through the constant reevaluation of teaching techniques which they carry out as a matter of course, they are in fact doing AR themselves; and by forming groups for support and professional exchange they can improve their lot and perhaps the educational setting as a whole. In this way, AR provides exciting possibilities for teachers to be agents of change and to make their presence felt beyond their own classroom walls.

For Further Reading

Anderson, C. L., Herr, K., & Nihlen, A. S. (1994). Studying your own school. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Crookes, G. (1993). Action research for second language teachers: Going beyond teacher research. Applied Linguistics, 14(2), 130-144

Edge, J. & Richards, K. (Eds.). 1993. Teachers develop teacher research. Heinemann.

TESOL Journal. (1994). 4(1). (Special issue on teacher research)