Collaborative practice-based research in supporting the language development of primary level bilingual children: A case study

Abstract

This article reports work within a pilot in-service teacher development programme, which aimed to introduce language support teachers to the potential of practice-based research. A teacher, a team coordinator and a teacher educator have collaborated to produce a reflective account, and an evaluation of both the teacher development programme and the research study. The case study illustrates the use of a particular model of exploratory practice (Allwright, 1993) and the authors suggest that the findings on language input and output offer a useful benchmark for further investigation. An evaluation of the project concludes by arguing for the importance of such collaborative work within the teacher educator's research workload. © 2000, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.