Wyatt, Mark

English

Portsmouth University Research Portal (Pure)

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This is a post-print version of: Wyatt, M. (2014). Action research on a teacher 
education programme. ELT Research 29, 5-8. Please cite accordingly. 
 
Author’s note: 
While I have submitted this post-print version to the university to conform to 
university requirements, I would prefer readers to access the article in its published 
form. This is because such activity might draw readers to other articles in the same 
publication, which might thus strengthen the research community centred on the 
journal. ELT Research is a deeply ethical, freely available, open access journal staffed 
by volunteers. A link to this particular issue is below:    
http://resig.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/3/6/26368747/elt_research_issue_29.pdf 
 
 
Action research on a teacher education programme 
 
Mark Wyatt 
 
Do teachers’ overriding academic concerns limit the extent to which they can 
grow as action researchers during formal teacher education? And as a result, 
is it more productive to look for transformative growth in action researchers 
elsewhere? Borg (2013) suggests this, but much might depend on both the 
nature of the course and how the teachers’ development is investigated. My 
qualitative study of four teachers of English on a University of Leeds BA 
TESOL programme in Oman (Wyatt, 2010a) drew longitudinally on 
observations, interviews and reflective writing to reveal transformative 
growth, which I have ascribed (e.g. in Wyatt, 2011) to the ‘constructivist’, 
context-sensitive nature of the programme (Mann, 2005). Borg’s words 
prompt me to reflect further, though. Was there any wider evidence of other 
teachers on this programme growing as action researchers, and can additional 
insights be offered into how they grew? In addressing these questions, I start 
with a vignette focused on Mohammed (real name used with his written 
permission), who was not one of the teachers I was formally researching but 
was someone I mentored in my role as a regional tutor throughout the three-
year BA programme.  
 
It was early September, the beginning of the school year. Mohammed was trying out 
new ideas, gained from the in-service BA TESOL. There had been input in the first 
eight months on communicative tasks, grouping learners, adapting materials, 
language acquisition processes. At school, Mohammed taught large classes in narrow 
classrooms; the chairs and desks were organized in rows. Mohammed was working 
with a curriculum being phased out. Unfortunately, while this contained some 
practice speaking activities, these lacked communicative purpose, and there was very 
little pair work and no group work. Nearby, in newer schools, learners were benefiting 
from a more learner-centred curriculum. Unfortunately, the changes had not reached 
Mohammed’s school yet.  
 
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Nevertheless, Mohammed had fresh ideas, as was evident when I came to see him 
teach. My role on the BA TESOL included visiting the schools of the 35 teachers in 
my regional group. I observed them each once a semester, lessons that were not 
assessed. Feedback sessions were learning opportunities, to stimulate reflection and so 
encourage teachers to relate their classroom practices to theory.  
 
For this observed lesson, Mohammed had adapted the curriculum materials to create 
an information gap, which was central to his communicative task, structured like 
Cameron’s (2001) with a preparation activity and a follow-up either side of a 
communicative ‘core’. This ‘core’ activity involved milling, with the Grade 6 learners 
(in their third year of learning English), equipped with either a picture or text, 
needing to find a partner on the other side of the room who had a match. Despite the 
constraints imposed by the classroom, the activity appeared to work well, although 
some used L1 rather than English. This lesson provided interesting evidence, I later 
told Mohammed, that milling activities can succeed if well set up, even with 45 
students in a narrow classroom! 
 
In the post-lesson discussion, we talked initially about the ‘core’ activity; Mohammed 
explained how it fulfilled various criteria. We then analysed the demands it made on 
learners, and discussed how support had been provided through preparation activities 
and classroom management strategies. Mohammed then reflected on the extent to 
which the task had stimulated learning and on his thinking processes in designing the 
lesson.  
 
Mohammed was engaging, then, in reflective practice, which involves 
observing while teaching, reflecting, theorizing and planning (Ur, 1996). This 
differs from teacher research, if the latter is “systematic, rigorous enquiry by 
teachers into their own professional contexts, and which is made public” 
(Borg, 2009a, p. 377). However, there is clearly a degree of overlap, as 
amongst the qualities required of teacher researchers are reflective skills, such 
as noticing, listening, analysing, problem-solving, hypothesizing and 
evaluating outcomes against objectives (Malderez and Bodóczky, 1999). If 
teachers can develop these reflective skills, supported by a constructivist 
approach to teacher education, i.e. one focused on context-specific needs 
(Mann, 2005), then they are also being equipped to carry out research.  
 
Reflecting on how Omani teachers developed into action researchers through 
the BA TESOL, Al-Sinani, Al-Senaidi and Etherton (2009) highlight first the 
encouragement of reflective skills that led into small-scale classroom research. 
The practical assignments of a range of taught methodology modules 
required these teachers to observe their learners, analyse learning/teaching 
materials used in their schools, adapt materials (e.g. to make them more 
communicative), trial them and then evaluate these innovations. Indeed, some 
of these skills were built into the very first methodology module and all were 
practised in the first year of the programme (Wyatt, 2009, 2011). 
Subsequently, in Year Two, the teachers received more formal input, on topics 
including action research, through a module on Researching TESOL, which 
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thus helped consolidate their growing practical knowledge as researchers. 
They then developed dissertations in their final year. Additional support was 
provided by mentoring in schools at a time of curriculum renewal when there 
was also greater encouragement amongst school supervisors of reflective 
practice (Wyatt and Arnold, 2012). Thus conditions were favourable for 
growth. As Mann (2005, p. 106) argues, discussing models of teacher 
education: “Where a teacher is able to stay in their teaching context, enriched 
by reading, reflective teaching and action research, the experience usually 
leads to sustained development”.   
 
What, then, were the outcomes in terms of action research on this BA TESOL? 
60 of the best of the approximately 900 dissertations produced by teachers on 
the ten-year project were selected by Borg (the UK-based academic director), 
edited and then published in three volumes (2006, 2008, 2009b), all available 
online through the Omani Ministry of Education portal. Many of these 
dissertations, particularly in the latter half of the project, were ‘action 
research’, i.e. they involved the teachers in systematically evaluating learning, 
planning interventions and carrying these out, observing, reflecting, analysing 
the results of their interventions, theorizing and perhaps then initiating fresh 
cycles before writing up the research (Burns, 1999).  
 
One of these dissertations was Mohammed’s, submitted 27 months after the 
observation and post-lesson discussion described above. His action research 
(Al-Marzooqi, 2008) focused on promoting oral interaction in English through 
group work, a mode of interaction novel in his context. Therefore, he needed 
to design group work activities and manage them in a way that maximized 
benefits (e.g. increased opportunities for talk, support for learner autonomy) 
and minimized drawbacks (e.g. “noise, domination by individual learners, 
confusion caused by learners’ unfamiliarity with group work, and excessive 
use of the L1”) (p. 44). He kept a research diary and also asked a fellow 
teacher, equipped with a specially-designed observation tool, to focus 
watchfully on a particular group in a sequence of lessons. The research design 
featured action cycles, with modifications (e.g. reductions in group size and 
the provision of greater support for cooperative learning) made on the basis 
of observations and reflections. After several cycles, positive learning 
outcomes were noted, in terms of improved learner strategies and motivated 
English language use. Al-Marzooqi felt that engaging in such small-scale 
classroom research was very beneficial for teachers trying to gain a greater 
understanding of how to support learning.  
 
The issues Al-Marzooqi (2008) was dealing with also preoccupied other action 
researchers in this rapidly-changing educational context. Some teachers, for 
example, working with the new curriculum in modern schools, were 
adjusting to group work for the first time and seeking to use it more 
effectively (e.g. Al-Maqbali, 2008), while a teacher in Wyatt (2010b) was 
focused on using group work to support low achievers. Others concentrated 
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on developing speaking skills. Al-Farsi (2008), for example, still working with 
the older curriculum, designed communicative speaking tasks and then 
observed and audio-recorded groups engaged in these, providing evidence of 
authentic motivated speech. Developing young learners’ abilities to use 
communication strategies through input followed by oral game-like practice 
was the thrust of Al-Senaidi’s (2009) research. Other skills received attention 
too. Maryam Al-Jardani (2008) focused on developing process writing, while 
Al-Sheedi (2008) developed an extensive reading programme. 
 
Another theme running through this body of research is self-assessment, an 
innovative feature of the new curriculum. Khalid Al-Jardani (2006), for 
example, observed Grade 5 learners assessing themselves, held conferences 
with them to clear up misconceptions, and monitored their progress, 
comparing their self-assessments with his own judgements. Over time, he 
found the majority became more accurate. Adopting a similar approach with 
her Grade 4 learners, Al-Sinani (2008) adapted and re-introduced a self-
assessment task her learners struggled with. She interviewed learners and 
engaged in awareness-raising, reporting, after several action cycles, a better 
degree of fit between her judgements and learners’ self-assessments. Al-
Asalam’s (2009) intervention in an older school not yet following the new 
curriculum involved introducing self-assessment activities and analysing how 
these helped. 
 
In short, there is evidence of teachers engaging deeply in action research to 
fulfil goals that seemed highly relevant to their teaching contexts in a way that 
seems intrinsically-motivated. While some of their colleagues would have 
perhaps been more ‘instrumentally-motivated’ (Borg, 2013), less interested in 
the process and possibly opting for research designs that minimized reflection 
on teaching/learning, those benefiting from action research included teachers 
conscious of personal growth and the rewarding experience of helping others 
(Al-Marzooqi, 2008; Wyatt, 2010a). Furthermore, there was self-awareness of 
how the ‘constructivist’ nature of the programme (Mann, 2005) was helping 
them develop as researchers (Al-Sinani, Al-Senaidi and Etherton, 2009). This 
all suggests that if, in formal teacher education, context-specific support is 
tailored to needs, if  conditions are favourable and if teachers are intrinsically-
motivated, growth identifiable through qualitative research methods (e.g. as 
in Wyatt, 2010a) can occur, in terms of both deeper practical understandings 
of research and more carefully-nuanced classroom practice.    
 
References 
Al-Asalam, K. A. (2009). Introducing self-assessment in Grade 8. In S. Borg 
(ed.) (2009b). 
Al-Farsi, F. S. (2008). Developing speaking skills through communicative 
tasks. In S. Borg (ed.) (2008). 
Al-Jardani, K. S. (2006). An evaluation of the effectiveness of self-assessment 
with young learners. In S. Borg (ed.) (2006).  
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Al-Jardani, M. M. (2008). Developing process writing strategies in Grade 6. In 
S. Borg (ed.) (2008). 
Al-Maqbali, R. S. (2008). Improving the effectiveness of group work. In S. 
Borg (ed.) (2008). 
Al-Marzooqi, M. S. (2008). Promoting oral interaction through group work. In 
S. Borg (ed.) (2008).   
Al-Senaidi, F. S. (2009). Developing young learners’ communication strategies. 
In S. Borg (ed.) (2009b). 
Al-Sheedi, S. S. (2008). Extensive reading, vocabulary development and 
attitudes to learning English. In S. Borg (ed.) (2008). 
Al-Sinani, S. K. (2008). Developing young learners’ self-assessment skills. In S. 
Borg (ed.) (2008).  
Al-Sinani, S. K., Al-Senaidi, F. S. and Etherton, S. (2009). Developing teachers 
as researchers: The BA Educational Studies (TESOL) Programme. In J. 
Atkins, M. Lamb and M. Wedell (eds.) (2009), International collaboration 
for educational change: The BA Project. Muscat: Ministry of Education, 
Oman.  
Borg, S. (ed.) (2006). Classroom research in English language teaching in Oman. 
Muscat: Ministry of Education, Oman.   
Borg, S. (ed.) (2008). Investigating English language teaching and learning in 
Oman. Muscat: Ministry of Education, Oman. 
Borg, S. (2009a). English language teachers’ conceptions of research. Applied 
Linguistics 30 (3), 358-388. 
Borg, S. (ed.) (2009b). Understanding English language teaching and learning in 
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Borg, S. (2013). Teacher research in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP. 
Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative action research for English language teachers. 
Cambridge: CUP. 
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge: CUP.  
Malderez, A. & Bodóczky, C. (1999). Mentor courses: A resource book for trainer-
trainers. Cambridge: CUP. 
Mann, S. (2005). The language teacher’s development. Language Teaching 38, 
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Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP. 
Wyatt, M. (2009). Practical knowledge growth in communicative language 
teaching. TESL-EJ 13 (2), 1-23.  
Wyatt, M. (2010a). Teachers researching their own practice. ELT Journal 65 (4), 
417-425.  
Wyatt, M. (2010b). An English teacher's developing self-efficacy beliefs in 
using groupwork. System 38 (4), 603-613. 
Wyatt, M. (2011). Becoming a do-it-yourself designer of English language 
teaching materials. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12 (1), Art 33, 1-38. 
Wyatt, M. and Arnold, E. (2012). Video-stimulated recall for mentoring in 
Omani schools. International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in 
Education 1 (3), 218-234.    
 


A course in language teaching.

An English teacher's developing self-efficacy beliefs in using groupwork.

An evaluation of the effectiveness of self-assessment with young learners.

Becoming a do-it-yourself designer of English language teaching materials.

Collaborative action research for English language teachers.

Developing process writing strategies in Grade 6.

Developing speaking skills through communicative tasks.

Developing teachers as researchers: The BA Educational Studies (TESOL) Programme.

Action research on a teacher education programme

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