SLA and language pedagogy: A socio-educational perspective

Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 93-116.

Graham Crookes, University of Hawai’i

Abstract

The connection between SLA research and second and foreign language (S/FL) teaching is discussed in this paper, from the viewpoint that such a relationship is desirable, and that it is advantageous to see it as one mediated by a variety of factors. At the same time, it is asserted that the relationship is presently often weaker than it should be. The conditions under which S/FL language teaching take place are identified as strongly contributing to this state of affairs, though other aspects of SLA research that might have limited its relevance to teaching are also considered. A call is made for empirical studies into the use by teachers of research.

SLA and language pedagogy: A socio-educational perspective

Teachers’ working conditions and research

Another teacher remarked:

The first quote suggests a relationship between the teacher and research (in general) which was very limited, because of its perceived irrelevance to a specific context and set of concerns. The relationship of the second teacher was characterized by guilt. This teacher felt that there was published work that might be useful or relevant to the classroom, but although it was valuable, because of the work conditions the teacher was unable to give it the attention that as a conscientious professional s/he believed it deserved. This is characteristic of a relation of alienation (cf. Crookes, 1993, 1995a, 1995b).

I do not mean to suggest that these responses are typical of all ES/FL teachers, nor even typical of what the two teachers quoted might have said at other, better, times in their professional careers. Rather, they illustrate what might be found among teachers working under the often exploitative conditions that characterize much of ESL in North America (Auerbach, 1991). Just how miserable these conditions are may be difficult to appreciate for those working in North American universities. Besides workload, physical conditions are also poor. A study of public schools in Washington DC states:

However, the situation is not so much better among North American teachers in more established positions. Many studies attest to the problems generated by what Huberman (1983) calls the "classroom press". Fullan (1991, pp. 33-34) refers to how it "draws [teachers’] focus to day-to-day effects or a short term perspective; it isolates them from other

adults ... it exhausts their energy ... it limits their opportunities for sustained reflection" and most seriously, for present purposes, "it tends to increase the dependence of teachers on the experiential knowledge necessary for day-to-day coping, to the exclusion of sources of knowledge beyond their own classroom experience". Under these circumstances, the relationship to be examined here must be weak, at least. These dismal conditions form the overarching context within which the possibility of improving the relationship must be discussed. Arguably, this can be achieved both by working on aspects of SLA research and also through working on the actual conditions of teaching. I move now to the former of these.

SLA and teaching: Some aspects of the relationship in the 80s

What is SLA? There have been many definitional discussions of the field of SLA (e.g.Ellis, 1992 and Gass, 1992 inter alia; cf. Ellis, 1994, p. 686, for more references); they are either a perennial flower or a hardy weed. SLA is, plausibly, a field in and of itself. However, one still common position (contra Gass, 1992; Grabe & Kaplan, 1992) is to see SLA as an important section of applied linguistics. Alternatively, if one can replace "applied linguistics" with a phrase like "second and foreign language learning and teaching", one may see SLA as "inextricably entwined" (Gass, 1992, p. 3) with the study of S/FL pedagogy, but a field of study not subordinate to it, nor a subsection of it. Although, as Ellis (1994, pp. 2-3) says, "SLA research has become a rather amorphous field of study with elastic boundaries", the surveys of SLA he lists (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991; McLaughlin, 1987; Spolsky, 1989; and his own earlier Ellis, 1985) do not equate SLA with applied linguistics, and see it as an area of inquiry separate from that into SL teaching itself, though an area with distinct implications for SL teaching. Indeed, there would be less interest in examining the relationship between SLA and S/FL pedagogy if SLA as generally understood included teachers and teaching.

Those who discussed the relationship between SLA and teaching in the 1980s in print were mainly scholars of SLA (see the references in Ellis 1994, ch. 15); of these the most pessimistic is that of the academic least associated with SLA, Widdowson (1990). The fact that those outside SLA are largely absent from the published record should indicate its weakness. Informal debates also took place, I believe, but were not committed to print. Those between teachers and academics certainly were not, as the words of teachers rarely appear in academic journals related to teaching or learning–a conspicuous silence with obvious implications. In addition, I believe there were also off-the-record debates between SLA researchers and academics who were not primarily within SLA. They were arguments in which the primary official issue was relevance to teaching, and one in which the degree of pessimism or skepticism was greater than the published record attests to.

However, the arguments advanced in these debates cannot be assessed in terms of their logical strength alone. Rather, they should be understood in context, and a key part of the reason for the debate lay, I think, in the contested nature of academic programs associated with S/FL teacher preparation–the most likely sites of employment for an SLA researcher. Then, as now, the departments fly a variety of academic flags: English, Linguistics, Education, Modern Languages, not to mention Applied Linguistics. Whenever the justification for the program and the primary cause of enrollment is teacher certification, disagreements and struggles will exist between members of such departments who have different disciplinary orientations. Arguably, most research efforts in our field prior to the inception of SLA had in fact concerned S/FL teaching (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991, p. 5), but subsequently, for some, the pendulum swung too far in the direction of studies of S/FL learning, rather than S/FL teaching, and the influence of this line became too great in what were de jure, or sometimes only de facto, S/FL teacher preparation programs. Issues of relevance and academic respectability do not remain abstract. Eventually, they also turn on positions, careers, the employment of specific individuals and the promotion or elimination of educational programs and departments, at least. This, together with the absence of the teachers’ voice from the published record, should remind us that discussions of the relevance of SLA to S/FL teaching have a power dimension.

Areas of relevance?

In my own contributions in the task line of SLA work (e.g., Crookes & Rulon, 1988), I have certainly thought that there were implications from this part of SLA to what forms of classroom interaction, both student-student, and student-teacher, might be most productive. SLA research, I have felt, has useful comments to make about the desirable characteristics of learning tasks, particularly as they might be constructed by the materials writer. The whole area of classroom interaction SLA research, within which Ellis places the task studies, is an area he feels "has made a real contribution to improving language pedagogy". He is a little disappointed about what this area has so far contributed "to our understanding of how interaction affects acquisition" (1994, p. 607), that is, to more fundamental (theoretical?) matters–which, of course, may well connect to second language pedagogy much less easily even than SLA studies of classroom interaction (cf. Lightbown, 1985). However, precisely because of the grounding of SLA in the learner rather than in the teacher, their concerns have not been prominent in SLA. Perhaps the return to investigations of the teaching of grammar, that Ellis (1991) sees as another major area for which SLA is of relevance to teachers (along with the individual difference area) is one attempt to address the matter of "how". Nevertheless, this lack of attention to teaching and the teacher’s perspective in SLA is a problem for relevance, and has led to calls to investigate S/FL teaching on its own terms (e.g., Widdowson, 1990).

Limitations in SLA from more recent perspectives

Changes that began to take place in the vicinity of SLA as the 1980s moved into the 1990s were the development of a metalevel understanding of sciences as social phenomena and cultural constructions, and the growth in acceptance, understanding, and utilization of qualitative and critical approaches to research. These have increasingly penetrated applied linguistics and to a lesser extent SLA, mainly from education. They shed additional light on why the relationship between the dominant understanding of 1980s SLA and both teaching and teachers might have been more tenuous than some would have wished.

Through to the 1970s linguistics still was such an important source discipline for SLA that it almost excluded psychology. When, as a student, I was first exposed to the work of Krashen (e.g., 1977), I found it interesting, but was frustrated by the absence of explanation concerning learning and acquisition and the lack of attachment to any more general understandings of human learning. It was a relief to discover cognitive psychology, and I was even more pleased when McLaughlin began introducing it into SLA as a tool to criticize existing work and construct new theories (McLaughlin, Rossman, & McLeod, 1983). At the time, however, I had no idea that this was just one psychology among many. Though cognitive psychology was to be preferred to its dominant predecessor because it was (purportedly, at least) about people (rather than rats), it was a long time before I began to understand that it, like its predecessor, could be seen as a sociocultural construct (cf. Gergen, 1985) that reflected at least to some extent the presumptions of the societies in which it developed. That was why it was fundamentally an individualist psychology that treats people as isolates (cf. Harré, 1984). Treating learning as internal to the learner places it a step or so away from the conditions of the teacher, who works as a partner to learners learning in groups. This conception potentially exacerbates the relevance problem.

The dominant Anglo-American psychology of adult learning, whether behaviorist or cognitive, is the most accepting of the "naturalist" (Bhaskar, 1979) position: that the social sciences should be constructed on the model of the natural sciences (and that as an unfortunate terminological consequence, it is not naturalistic, in the sense of Lincoln & Guba, 1985). A dominant trend in SLA has followed this line, and so, even though the findings of SLA research were generally characterized as "theory" merely as sets of laws, and rarely articulated as theories in either the logical positivist or realist mode, they certainly fitted in well with the older research and development model of education systems, in which, first. researchers searching for truth do pure science. The rhetorical forms in which their research are dispensed are structured accordingly, in what Bourdieu (1988) calls "magisterial language". Findings, presented in "language [whose] status and authority ... tends to rule out any question about the genuinely informative efficiency of the communication" (Corson, 1991, p. 232), are handed down to practitioners.

Classic early SLA made considerable use of the case study (e.g., Hatch, 1978), a form that has continued to be used (Duff, 1988), and the language of these reports seems relatively accessible to the lay person. Report formats and metalanguage in the dominant quantitative-experimental paradigm, however, have often been seen as inaccessible to teachers. Many SLA researchers have been aware of this aspect of the relevance problem and tried hard to deal with it. On the one hand, this led to at least one work for teachers based on research in which, however, the research was relegated to extensive footnotes or fine print (Krashen, 1985) and on the other, to attempts in print (and of course, in applied linguistics programs) to educate teachers concerning the statistical paradigm and its reports. Introducing one such effort, Brown (1991) observes that "many of the statistical studies on language learning and teaching that are found in TESOL Quarterly may be incomprehensible to the very EFL/ESL teachers who make up the intended audience" (Brown, 1991, p. 569).

To summarize thus far: Arguments could be advanced to the effect that the relationship between SLA and pedagogy, though one having potential in the abstract, remains weak in practice because of the lack of uptake of S/FL research in general by S/FL teachers. This situation could perhaps be improved if (a) SLA focused more on learning as social rather than psychological; (b) it were more oriented to the qualitative tradition of investigation and particularly its style of reporting; (c) it recognized the status of ESL teachers (part, at least, of the presumed audience for the work) in native English countries as generally marginalized representatives of a marginalized constituency and accordingly did research that incorporated issues of power, that is, critical research.

Teachers and researchers; teachers (do) research; teachers’ knowledge

Having looked at the relationship from the viewpoint of weakness in the conditions of teaching and subsequently in terms of limitations and potential problems at the SLA end, I now consider the two sides of this debate as people. Teachers and researchers (and the two are sometimes one) can connect on the matter of research knowledge in various ways; and the recognition that teachers have their own knowledge independent of research is also important.

Empirical research on the communication networks and contacts between researchers and practitioners involved in a nationwide series of studies suggests that a greater degree of contact among individuals in a network of socially or professionally related educators and researchers increases the likelihood that research findings will be utilized by practitioners (Huberman, 1990). However, in another large research project, in which teachers were directly involved in some aspects of the investigation, direct teacher input in the formulation of reports was required to ensure they took a form that was likely to lead to use (Florio-Ruane & Dohanich, 1984).

Smaller scale partnerships have been widely advocated. One such partnership in the area of language instruction was between academic Shirley Brice Heath and high school practitioner Amanda Branscombe. The partnership came about on a base of Branscombe having refocused her teaching to make it more exploratory (though she does not use Allwright’s 1991 term), inspired particularly by the work of Berthoff (1987, originally published in 1979). Having taken in-service coursework on teacher research and conducted some preliminary work, she invited Heath to her classroom to do a joint investigation of high school writing. It is a noteworthy example because of the prominence of the university researcher, because several reflective accounts exist of it, and because Branscombe has gone on to develop and report independent research (1987; cf. Branscombe & Thomas, 1992) and to further promote such connections (Branscombe, Goswami, & Schwarz, 1992). Allwright and Bailey (1990) also draw attention to the potential of such partnerships, referring to Florio and Walsh (1981) and Watson-Gegeo and Ulichny (1988) as reports even closer to our field. They remark,

Such partnerships are also possible in the area of SLA and might be expected to produce research that would be particularly relevant and meaningful to the teacher, and, one might hope, to S/FL pedagogy in general.

However, we should recognize the many social-institutional obstacles to doing this sort of research. There are few professional rewards available to the individuals on both sides that derive directly from such partnerships. At present, although service is officially part of an academic’s responsibilities in the US, it is rarely the deciding factor in hiring or promotion. And again, for most teachers, engaging in research, even if it results in improvements in classroom practice, is unlikely to carry any financial reward, or even benefit in terms of promotion or prestige. That is to say, in general, the educational institutions on both sides of the relationship are tacitly supporting the divide rather than helping individuals to cross it. Counterexamples simply reflect the point that in some specific circumstances, it is of mutual benefit to the two participants. This idea of mutual benefit is central to some efforts to address the relationship at the institutional level.

A quite separate line of development has been that associated with the term "teacher research", which has been a small part of our discourse for more than a decade (cf. Long, 1983) and in education literature for much longer. Initially, in education, teacher research was not necessarily equated with action research but this has become the more common usage in applied linguistics (but cf. Crookes, 1993). Anderson, Herr, and Nihlen (1994) see the growth in this area as connected to other changes mentioned in a previous section: that the teacher-researcher movement has moved forwards in parallel with the growth and acceptance of qualitative research in education. Tracing the history of "practitioner research", they state:

How does the foregoing play into the SLA domain? First, it is generally believed that teachers who do action research are more able to make use of published research (e.g., Altricher, Posch, & Somekh, 1993; Tikunoff & Mergendoller, 1983; personal accounts support this in Atwell, 1987 and Mohr, 1987). Far more radically, and perhaps optimistically (Roberts, 1993), it is sometimes asserted that it can challenge relations on a broader scale:

But in addition–to take a retrograde step–although this general approach assumes teachers will investigate their own teaching, their own classrooms or schools, in the (generally rare) situations in which teachers’ working conditions permit them to conduct any research at all, they could do research that is theoretically motivated by the SLA tradition. For that matter, they could do work that generates grounded theory about instructed SLA, from and with the students in their own classrooms.

Finally, it has sometimes been recognized that S/FL research often follows, rather than leads, S/FL teaching (e.g., Ellis, 1991). This is particularly true for SLA studies pertaining to innovations in SL curriculum and pedagogy, which are what Freeman and Richards (1993) call "theory-based" (i.e., in the pejorative sense of theory as something not grounded in facts). It should not be forgotten that although it is true that many university SLA researchers are not ESL teachers in the sense of being currently involved in classroom ESL instruction, many of them have done ES/FL teaching in the past (Pica, 1994), though only a handful have managed to keep a foot in both camps (Clarke, 1994). In some cases, what was the stimulus for their research has been their own experiences as S/FL learners and teachers. For some researchers, a substantial part of their research begins while they are MA or doctoral students, at which time they are often still doing (E)S/FL teaching. The hints are available in some published work and a historical excavation of the antecedents of specific SLA studies in classroom experience would be desirable. The more general application of this line is what Ellis (1988) calls an "educational" approach to SLA that "seeks to illuminate language pedagogy through studies of what takes place in the name of instruction and how this affects acquisition" (Ellis, 1992, p. 15).

The ties that bind: What transmits or sustains these relationships?

I addressed the relationship between SLA research and S/FL pedagogy as potentially concretized through the actions and attitudes of teachers. The question, "What is the relationship between SLA research and pedagogy?" is susceptible to conceptual analysis, but I believe that it is more important for SLA and for applied linguistics that it now be responded to empirically. If narrowed in a variety of ways it could produce a much needed set of investigations concerning specific bodies of SLA research (methodological and conceptually distinguishable), specific individuals or groups of teachers, and thereby, specific pedagogic and curriculum practices. Regrettably, it is an issue that has hardly been studied by those involved in SLA or (E)S/FL. However, knowledge utilization and information dissemination are empirical fields of study (e.g., Beal, Dissanayake & Konoshima, 1986; cf. Cousins & Leithwood, 1993; Fullan, 1991; Huberman, 1983, 1990; Tyler, 1988)–both their procedures and conceptual frameworks could and should be brought to bear. The persistent negative chorus on the teaching-research connection in our field deserves more direct inquisition than it has had in the past. (In the absence of such work, of course, my comments in this paper should be seen as tentative and personal.) Subareas which deserve attention are as follows.

Let us return to the quotes from the overworked teachers. Does the fact that they have no time to read the TESOL Quarterly (for example) truly mean that they have no relationship with research, or SLA research, or that their pedagogy is really uninformed by it? Bailey’s (1992) study of ESL teacher development does mention in passing some role for published literature on teaching and learning in changes in her respondents’ teaching. The teachers quoted at the outset of the paper indicated that their major sources for ideas about ESL teaching were other teachers, but also mentioned textbooks as a source. Do textbooks reflect SLA research? Many do not, of course, but some textbooks in our field do now contain ideas that were not present explicitly in texts in the past, and did show up on the horizon of applied linguistics primarily within research (cf. Hutchinson & Torres, 1994). One example would be the role of learning strategies, that has finally made its way from the journal literature of 10 and 20 years ago (Rubin, 1975; Stern, 1975) to handbook (Rubin & Thompson, 1994) and textbook (Chamot, 1987) forms in recent years.

Some of the criticisms of published SLA research have focused on the journal literature (as did one of the teachers quoted). But if teachers are going to get anything from SLA research, are they not more likely to get it from publications that try to provide a more substantial chunk of information than the single piece of the puzzle provided by most journal articles:

So one might assert that the relationship between SLA research and the average classroom teacher, if it exists, is almost certainly a mediated one, with various agents (including textbooks) standing between the two groups. It seems that it is still primarily one-way–from the research community to teachers. Because there is comparatively little SL action research going on, I do not think there are many cases where pedagogical problems faced by S/FL teachers are solved through their own investigations and concomitant use of research publications. This is a pity, and if there were such work going on it would fit with the mediated model, in that through administrative support and encouragement, research might be being made more use of.

The NNER associates (e.g., Sirotnik & Goodlad, 1988; cf. Fullan, 1993), seeking to improve the U.S. education system following their analysis of the many failed reform efforts, reject single factor solutions, taking the position that all elements of the education system related to teacher preparation must be changed at once if there is to be improvement. Clarke (1994), in a discussion topically related to the present paper, also advocates a systems-based solution. Seeing SLA research in a system-wide context is desirable, so in entering some suggestions under separate headings below I am not attempting to isolate them; rather, I think that it is essential to contextualize adequately the problem and see it as a social phenomenon. If knowledge is socially constructed, so (presumably) is the relationship between a group of people, their practices, and a body of knowledge.

If the decontextualized nature of mainstream SLA research contributes to the problem of relevance or uptake, what should be done? The increased visibility of the qualitative tradition seems likely to improve accessibility, so its use should be encouraged. Could SLA become more contextualized by utilizing a more critical vision, either directly or through drawing upon critical versions of the source disciplines of linguistics (Rampton, 1995) and psychology (Sullivan, 1984)? Although it might be argued that this would aid its relevance to some ESL teachers within countries in which the status and working conditions of teachers are under attack, and in which ESL is the need of the refugee, the migrant, or the undocumented, in EFL countries, where English is the aspiration of the middle classes and the power language of the elite, some teachers could find such work inaccessible. However, even in these places, the working conditions of teachers in elite institutions are by no means always favorable; empirical studies in this tradition would inevitably be focused on specific contexts and might thereby avoid this problem.

Most published research, not only in SLA but also in applied linguistics, is done by academics. This is even the case in strongly teacher-oriented journals such as English Teaching Forum. True involvement by teachers in research, as mentioned above, should strengthen the relationship between research and pedagogy. Therefore, particularly of interest should be TESOL Journal, which was instituted partly because of perceptions of distance between TESOL Quarterly and ES/FL teachers, and which has developed a mentoring scheme to induct and support new writers, potentially nonacademics. If SLA researchers are concerned to foster the relationship, perhaps their journals could learn from this approach too.

If the relationship, insofar as it exists, is a mediated one, perhaps strengthening the forms of mediation would help, because according to Fullan (1991, p. 53):

This could begin, and perhaps is already beginning, in teacher education programs. One of the limitations of older approaches to teacher education often discussed has been the lack of opportunity provided for student teachers to digest the content of academic coursework so as to be able to relate it to their teaching. This is less of a problem when courses are taken during a break in one’s teaching career or concurrent with either a formal teaching position or an extended practicum or other practical experience somewhat concurrent with the academic coursework. The importance of this has been raised to an overall organizational level in the recent approaches to reflective teaching in applied linguistics (e.g., Wallace, 1991, cf. Freeman, 1992). It is applied to all content in preservice courses by Richards and Lockhart (1994), but presumably the argument also applies to the subsection of content that would appear in a course on SLA.

Concluding remarks

Although I have suggested that dominant historical trends in the conduct and reporting of SLA research, as well as the restricted way the field has generally been defined, may have to bear some responsibility for what is in practice a weak relationship to S/FL pedagogy, in the final analysis it is not the case that all the aspects of the problem I have considered above should be equally weighted. I agree with van Lier (1990, p. 181) who, in a discussion paralleling the present one, remarks that "the solution is not for [SLA] researchers to simplify their research, or even their reporting (though this can often profit from de-jargonization)"; rather, the work conditions of S/FL teaching, the conception of a teachers’ responsibilities, and the conception of schools’ responsibilities in sustaining professional practice and development must change. I am, then, returning to the problems I emphasized at the outset of this paper. The present system of education in much of the developed world prevents primary and secondary level teachers from exercising reflection, and indeed prevents them from having careers and professional responsibilities; although it allows this, under pressure, to teachers at the tertiary level (i.e., professors). In much of the "South," we should remember, professionalism is not even allowed under the work conditions of the university (one reason why SLA research is not truly international).

Because of the characteristics of traditional (so-called positivist) SLA research, it is difficult for mainstream SLA researchers to incorporate elements in their research that can directly engage with the roles and responsibilities of teachers. In defense of colleagues, I hasten to point out that (following the locutions of the linguistic turn) the construction of SLA in this form should not be seen solely as a deliberate act of those now senior figures in the field–it was a construction imposed on them, and the embryonic field of SLA, by preexisting discourses. Nevertheless, alternatives are now available.

A number of individuals in SLA and more broadly in applied linguistics have advocated action research (Ellis, Long, Nunan, van Lier, among others) as a way of breaking down the barriers between teachers and researchers. In addition, if the understanding of action research to be used is critical and participatory (cf. Auerbach, 1993; Crookes, 1993; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) this can take teachers from immediate technical problems to collaborative investigation of the social conditions that prevent them from being professional. Whether this form of action will lead to more and better traditional SLA research, I am not sure, but it might facilitate the kind of teacher employment conditions under which more conceptually challenging SLA research reports might be capable of being digested and utilized in pedagogy.

In addition, few SLA researchers are just academics–many are also teacher educators. Insofar as they see the positions of teachers as an oppressed group as part of the problem concerning the relationship between SLA and S/FL pedagogy, they have at least the option not to reproduce the conditions of oppression in their own classrooms. That is to say, they have available to them immediately the possibility of engaging in a critical pedagogy of teacher education, or even of SLA, in courses they teach on that topic. In addition, one who researches SLA also has the option to research other matters. The tools for researching the conditions of teaching may not be those commonly used by mainstream SLA researchers–if so, coursework (in qualitative-interpretive research or critical ethnography) is available on many a campus.

In short: A practical relationship between SLA research and S/FL pedagogy depends particularly on the conditions of S/FL teachers. If SLA researchers are to take any responsibility for sustaining it in practice, they must either incorporate sociopolitical considerations, particularly as they apply to teachers, into their investigations (which would mean a redefinition, for many, of SLA itself), or they must engage directly, rather than through SLA research, with the educational and political systems that persist in devaluing the knowledge and work of teachers while preventing them from engaging in the sort of reflective practice that would sustain the kind of relationship between research and pedagogy that is most desirable.

References

Notes

1 For instance, see Rice & Richlin (1993) for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, architecture, and nursing; Wenger (1987) for social work; Morrow-Bradley & Elliott (1986) and Peterson (1991) for counseling.

2 However, here in the absence of specific case studies of teachers relating or not to SLA research, it will be difficult to avoid some overhomogenizing of an enormously diverse group of individuals and contexts.

3 Cf. Auerbach (1991), Gitlin (1987), Hargreaves (1992), Huberman (1983), Wright (1988) among others. But see Smyth (1995) on the limitations of applying the conception "professional" to teaching.

4 Similar conditions prevail in the UK–the "makeshift basis" and "unsuitable spaces" of ESL in the UK as Ellis (1985, p. 2) named them–and obviously, such a description could also apply to the conditions for EFL teaching in the state sectors of less developed countries.

5 As is applied linguistics: cf. Rampton (1995).

6 See the contents pages of these surveys, for example, to arrive at something like the following: interlanguage studies, especially of variability, acquisition orders and developmental sequences, the linguistic environment (input and interaction), transfer, SLA theories (cognitive and other), and individual differences, including learners strategies.

7 "The social sciences develop divergently in different countries, and different core conceptions–up to and including systematic variations in what is understood as ‘science’–are found" (Giddens, 1991, p. xiv). Cf. Sridhar (1994).

8 A couple of exceptions would be Clarke (1994) and Bolitho (1991).

9 See Eisenhart & Borko (1993) for an extended discussion of what must be done in conducting future classroom research to address the lack of uptake of even this form of research by the teacher.

10 Indigenous psychologies have not been used to explain or understand S/FL learning; but indigenous pedagogies have (Watson-Gegeo & Gegeo, 1992); cf. Cazden’s criticisms (1990).

11 Eisenhart & Borko (1993, p. 10), worrying about the non-use of both quantitative and qualitative reports, refer to the latter being dismissed if teachers see them as reporting the "obvious", or if teachers "do not have time to read the often lengthy and tedious reports that qualitative researchers think they must produce in order to ‘explain’ their findings."

12 Though this has not always been the case as there is not one tradition here, but many–cf. Lakomski (1988, p. 54) on the "implicit ... conservatism of the interpretive school." Note use of the term "positivist ethnography" as synonymous with the anthropology of colonialism. Cf. Clifford (1988); Roman (1992).

13 Nevertheless, it should be remembered that many S/FL researchers working in the quantitative tradition had and still have an emancipatory intent.

14 On the positions that these two are not critical, see e.g., Hodge & Kress (1993) and Sullivan (1984) respectively.

15 A science, that is to say, which was a historical construction, originally of the Enlightenment period, during which science replaced religion as the source of certainty in an uncertain world (cf. Toulmin, 1990).

16 Studies of bilingual education and bilingual classrooms play a very small role in surveys of the field of SLA such as the one in Ellis (1994). Perhaps, given the association between SLA and the quantitative tradition already discussed, this is partly because, as Ellis (1994, p. 569) notes, studies of bilingual classrooms have been mainly associated with the ethnographic tradition. Studies of bilingual education as presented in NABE Journal, on the other hand, have been mainly quantitative.

17 A form of reductionism (cf. Schumann, 1993; Manicas, 1982).

18 As happens, for example, at the University of Hawai'i (McEwan, 1996). See Cole & Knowles (1993) for a fuller discussion of the range of relationships and distribution of functions in such "partnership research."

19 At the time of Elbaz’s study, she was able to write, "we know little of the role actually played in the teacher’s thinking by theory." This has changed for education in general, and is changing, to some extent, for S/FL teaching. She continued, "the teacher educator must know a good deal about how teachers actually view theory–how willing they are to make use of whatever theories they have access to, when they are able to see theory as relevant, [and] what kinds of theories they find most helpful." (p. 68)

20 Consider error treatment in the acquisition of a written S/FL as an SLA topic plausibly of concern to S/FL teachers and with direct implications for pedagogy. The experienced scholar, though not a specialist in the area, may fairly swiftly arrive at Robb, Ross, & Shortreed (1986) through SLIA, and Fathman & Whalley (1990) through knowing of the existence of Kroll (1990). But an SL teacher without, say, MA level training, and unfamiliar with specialist bibliographic resources...?

21 For more on the role of teachers unions in promoting change, see Fullan (1993).

22 Even in our field: Impey & Underhill (1995), and White, Martin, Stimson, & Hodge (1991).

23 For Sartre (1966), the engaged intellectual uses writing as a means of action in and on society; "organic" intellectuals (Gramsci, 1971) have a direct connection to the institution they are trying to change; Foucault (1980) advises that they be "specific" rather than "universal" intellectuals, in that they address specific aspects of oppression in contexts they are familiar with and not try to claim or coopt movements for social change.