English Language Teaching in its Social Context

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 67procedures, and methods of testing learners and evaluating curricula ~ in other words anyaspect of language pedagogy. These proposals, may take the form of original ideas, but as Ihave already pointed out, it is more likely that they will identify options already to be foundwithin pedagogy. Irrespective of their form, these proposals cannot have the status ofprescriptions. Rather they serve as illuminative ideas. They are suggestions which practitioners,if they see fit, may or may not choose to experiment with.The provisional nature ofproposals is determined not by doubts about the validity of the theory /research upon whichthey are based (even though such doubts may well exist) but by the recognition that no theoryand no research can claim to be applicable to the myriad contexts in which practitionersoperate. The applied SLA researcher, however, has a duty to ensure that any proposal haspotential for application and, in this respect, the attributes of different proposals can beexamined from the innovationist perspective described in the previous section. In this way,it may be possible to identify which proposals have a good chance of being adopted byteachers.3 Researching the L2 classroomAs we have seen, another way of operationalizing constructs, whether these have been derivedfrom pure research or from teachers’ personal knowledge, is to carry out investigationsof classroom learners. However, this should involve research on classrooms, not just researchin classrooms (Wright 1992). Such research provides a means of empirically testingpedagogic proposals (Long 1990). It provides some assurance that the proposals are sound.It helps to ward off attacks that proposals derived from teachers’ own experience or frommethodologists’ writings are nothing more than hunches or unproven prescriptions. Furthermore,practitioners are likely to attend to classroom research more seriously than to pureresearch because it directly addresses issues that they are concerned with.Classroom-centred research conducted by researchers, however, does not supply a bodyof information about effective pedagogy which can be transmitted to teachers as solutionsto their problems any more than does pure research. The most that can be said is thatproposals that are tested through classroom research may become more fully illuminated.In accordance with the views of Stenhouse, Verma, Wild, and Nixon (1 982), the externalvalidity of any research, including classroom research, can only be established by individualteachers in the contexts of their own classrooms. It follows, then, that what Widdowson(1 990) refers to as ‘outsider research’ needs to be complemented by insider research, whichis research conducted by teachers themselves.4 The teacher as researcherWe saw earlier in our discussion of the educational perspective that there is a compelling casefor involving teachers in researching their own classroom. Teacher research focuses onproblems identified by teachers. It provides means of enabling teachers to reflect on theirown practice and, thereby, of developing theories of language learning and teaching that arerelevant to their own classroom contexts. The advocacy of teacher research (e.g. Nunan1990) in recent years reflects the increasing awareness that language teachmg is an educationalenterprise and, thus, needs to be informed by mainstream educational thinking. Widdowson(1 990) sees the need for teachers to be engaged in the active process of experimenting intheir classrooms as a way of determining the practical effect of ideas in action.There is still a role for SLA in teacher-led research, however. AsWiddowson (1 993) haspointed out, action research, like any other kind of research, cannot take place withouttheorizing. Teachers need to engage in the process of conceptual evaluation in order toidentify research problems. A familiarity with SLA, then, can help teachers shape problems