Dear Nick, your view is quite interesting and I would like to add something as team member of educational researcher group at University and teacher of English. I was asked to join the research group in the year 1994, when Educational experts realized they needed a classroom where to see in practice the topic they were looking into!! Needless to say, I agreed with immense pleasure because that gave me the possibility of finding theoretical answers to some practical problem I was seeing in my everyday practice. As you can see, both theory and practice are like an old married couple, they fight each other continuously, but they can’t survive one without the other. Action Research is a research paradigm that has quite successfully brought both parts into a peaceful agreement and we can discuss some of its techniques whenever you like! Always a pleasure meeting you, aurelia

I very much share your ideas and concerns. However, there are some good (if not best) practices in Finland for example. The paradigm of "teachers and researchers" is already included in the teacher training programs. Thus, it is in a way natural to have the skills of a researcher but at the same time keep the "healthy" human attitude of an in-service teacher.  Helga

Dear Nick,

it all depends on how you see research.

1 - Do you believe that research is about new findings, or about confirming or refuting theories?(quantifying, statistics, etc)

or:

2 - Do you believe that research is a way to construct reality and possible readings of the world? (etnography, case studies, etc)

all the best,

Carla 

Dear all,

Quite challenging issues you are debating by here! Your question, Nik, is so dialectical and philosophical as well. It seems to me that you are insinuating by your question the dichotomy of practice and theory.

I did read recently Jean Jacques Rousseau's Emile ou de l'Education -in French- where the writer seems to amalgam in a subtle and beautiful manner both theorising and practising via his son Emile. Nevertheless, throughout the book I felt the writer is challenged by the contingencies manifested by Emile, which makes theory difficult to verify.

Hence I dare say that teaching is a domain where theory can not be verified amply, because the student is an entity that keeps changing colours affectively, psychically, cognitively and socially, which makes theory unable to attain the notoriey of exact sciences -if there be any. At the same time, practice is also relative and is conditioned by the temperament of the classroom community.

I think actually that both theory and practice complement simultaneously each other .

best

dear all,

                  a very interesting question nic.according to me research is a perfection of a teacher's academic endeavour and is measured by  no of pages we submit, whereas teaching  is measured  only by students academic achievement.in this situation,one can be an ideal teacher not neccesarily being a researcher. but as a researcher the same is expected to be more of a teacher.

regards

dr.mangay

moderator of english for specific purposes 

Hi Nic

In answer to your question: it depends, I guess. If we were to reflect on the 'history' of language teaching, it might appear that teaching came first. Haha. Obviously the first 'teachers' must have been a peer. Being the 'teacher' would obviously mean s/he had learned what s/he knew and did from someone else. Learned some knowledge or how to do something from someone else. It would not have appeared 'out of thin air'. Possibly even learned another language from someone else. It might also include any new ideas and innovations that that 'teacher' had gained from insight and reflection as they practiced their 'art'. I am quite sure they would also have noticed that some people could not learn the knowledge and skills they possessed as well as they had, or even at all.

In fact, I recall learning somewhere that some 'teachers' had actually chosen their 'pupils'; decided who would and who would not be one of their 'pupils', and/or invited someone to be one of their pupils. Thus we see the beginnings of 'private' education. Public education as we now know it and experience it didn't eventuate until industrialization and mass production happened in England and Europe. If I am at all correct in my 'history' of education.

Language 'education' was firstly either something that happened in the family context or publically between 'pupil' and 'teacher'. A pupil in this latter sense being someone who had found themselves in another language community and didn't know the host community's language. So they set about trying to learn it. Who would have been their 'teacher' in this situation? Unlike the family context, in which the learner learned perhaps two languages rather than one, the 'street' learner might have had one or several or even everyone as 'teacher'. But 'success' would not have been homogeneous from one person to the next, I'm sure.

Who might we considered to be the 'first' researcher in this extremely paraphrased (and likely inaccurate) 'history' of language education? I am inclined to think that it was anyone interested in language and culture enough to reflect on it and ponder its nature. A 'short' history of ELT can be read in the work of Howatt (1984), who begins 'at the end of the Middle Ages when French died out as the second language of the kingdom and gradually surrendered to English'. People at this time witnessed a lingusitic change from a bilingual feudal society to a monolingual feudal society, over a period of a few hundred years, I think. In 1385, few people apparently knew French as a L2. After the Black Death of 1356, French became a foreign language. We know this because someone bothered to write about it.

Your question is that 'unless we teach, what is there to base research on?' Well, there's plenty to base 'research' on, I think. Observation, for one. There's an argument in your question, in which you imply that teaching is done without 'thinking' about it. It implies that teaching is a 'natural' skill (whatever that means) possessed by everyone and needn't be learned from anyone else. It's in us, so just let it come out! That people needed know how to teach, that it will just happen, as if by magic. And, equally and opposite, that 'learning' from a 'teacher' (who may not have learned how to be a teacher) happens without thinking about it too, because learning how to learn need not be learned, and also will happen as if by magic. There is a school of thought which actually thinks along these lines, but I'm not a graduate of that school.

So, 'teaching' happens in your argument as some 'natural' phenomenon. An evolving event, haphazard and clueless. All the 'teacher' need do is simply speak (say anything whether meaningful or not) and that will automatically make him or her a 'teacher'. And, his or her 'student' of language will 'pick it up' as part of a naturally evolving event too, mostly 'unconsciously' by the sound of it, because they needn't pay attention to anything the 'teacher' says, since they needn't learn how to learn, they'll just listen passively (needn't listen actively) and let the language wash over them like a breath of fresh air. The student simply pays little attention to their 'teacher' or 'teachers' and some how manages to learn the language without breaking a sweat or getting a single headache even though s/he probably didn't understand a word of it. Teaching and learning in this situation happens as if by magic, and everything works out well for both 'teacher' and 'learner', in the end. That seems to be what should happen in this scenario of yours, Nic.

In sum, I think your argument is based in part on an innatist view of language and language learning. First championed by Chomsky, then (enthusiastically) 'sold' by Stephen Krashen as the 'natural' approach, and now peddled by some obscure new age religion. I say 'new age' religion because I actually met a Canadian and watched him try to 'win converts' in a Billy Graham style crusade of language 'teaching'. Only it didn't go down well with the teachers or the students of that institute because they realized that half of what he said wasn't based in reality or even science. They knew from experience exactly what it is like to 'teach' a foreign language and exactly what it is like to 'learn' another language as a student or learner. It was neither simple nor easy, often resulted in a headache, and lots of forgetting what had been supposedly learned consciously and very little learned unconsciously. Very little if anything came 'naturally', and very little if anything came for free.

You probably feel insulted again, right? It depends on who the teacher is and who the researcher is. In fact, the real ideas and innovations probably come from both teachers and researchers. Particularly teachers who pay attention to what they are doing and the effects of their doing on learners. Researchers pay attention because that's what they want to do. Imagine what will happen with the teacher/researcher or researcher/teacher?

Sorry for the long post, again. Just love making long posts. :))

robert

Hi Nik,

Researchers eh!? :-)

I see the whole field as a circle. Maybe what the researcher should have said would have been along the lines of "how do we know what's effective or what could be better?". I definitely think that the relatively subjective, unstructured experiences of a single teacher, or even a group of them, although important and valid, can certainly be placed into context by good research. We can then experiment with other ideas and see what happens. Research can arise out of that experience and you have your circle.

I firmly believe that I can be a better teacher with the knowledge gained from research than I would be without it.

Regards,

Kevin

Hi Nik:

     By the term "research," do you mean "theoretical research" (investigating how things work without regard for whether or not the findings will have any practical application) or "applied research" (investigating how things work with the aim of applying the findings to the development of a teaching approach)?

Dan Jenkins (Foreign Expert, English Department, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, China)