Researching Language-Based Teaching: Walking the Walls of our Thinking

In this essay, I use the title to organize an argument about the particular—and possibly unique—place of researching second language teacher education in educational research more generally. The argument rests on two points. First, rather than simply applying methods to problems, researching is a process of taking a position both epistemologically and ontologically. Second, because language plays a unique role in how we experience our lives and worlds, it plays with usual ways of thinking and organizing educating teachers. Basically, we are positioning ourselves conceptually and practically in this havoc through the ideas we use as researchers and teacher educators in second language teacher education. As building blocks of our thinking, these ideas categorize and organize how we design and conduct studies and how we develop and implement teacher education activities and programs. In so doing the ideas create possibilities as well as blind spots, a process which I refer to here the ‘walls of our thinking’.