Critical Practitioner Research in Language Education Under Difficult Circumstances

Abstract

Practitioners in language and literacy education who are interested researching and furthering social justice issues often seek critical approaches to their work. Ultimately, the goal of such research under favorable conditions is to produce action for change, however, under difficult circumstances that approaches need to be adjusted. Today, practitioners may find resistance to critical work from neoliberal education policies, to which such work is undesirable in that it may harm profits, or from restrictive administrative regimes. First, this chapter gives an historical overview of critical approaches to educational research, and then discusses in detail an approach the authors call critical practitioner research. Drawing on a case study of research done at private language institute in South Korea, the authors highlight several issues which prohibited the use of other previously defined critical approaches to research, including restrictive school policies, and working with young learners. Ethical and reporting issues of such research are also discussed. Out of this work, the authors propose three broad principles for critical practitioner research: a focus on social justice issues, flexibility in data collection and exploration, and collaboration with participants to the extent it is possible while recognizing that fully participatory approaches may not always be possible.