were not interested or did not have the time to participate. As it pertains to my communication with second language consultants at various boards of education, it is also possible that the second language consultants served as gatekeepers and thus did not forward the information to teachers. The partnership was successful, however, at having researchers commit to the study in that an author of each article participated in the creation of her or his support guide and contributed to the discussion forum. Such commitment may speak to the power of the intermediaries, as suggested elsewhere( Levin, 2010), to have researchers commit to make their research accessible to a teaching audience. Further, the project successfully engaged two Faculties of Education in the study. Although such participation may have been a direct result of instructor influence, such an experience may prove to positively influence the participants’ willingness to consult research in the future. This less than ideal teacher participation highlights the need to approach potential participants in different ways, through a range of contact and communication mechanisms.
In order to further bridge the gap between second language teachers and researchers, this study addressed the difference in language register by creating support guides for each of the research articles. The provision of the support guides was grounded in the research of Hemsley-Brown( 2004) that found teachers to be inexperienced at reading research articles. The questionnaire findings, however, revealed that the majority of this study’ s participants read research on the Internet and almost half of them also read research articles.
Given that the majority did not read articles from the Canadian Modern Language Review, the most established journal for second language research in Canada, suggests that their familiarity with research may come from other areas of interest rather than second language education.
Given that this study’ s participants had more experience with reading research articles than those from other studies may also be indicative of the group of participants being a majority of teacher candidates who, at the time of the study, were studying in an academic institution rather than more experienced teachers potentially further removed from academia and less likely to use research( Costa, Marques, & Kempa, 2000; Everton, Galton, & Pell, 2002).
Further to providing support guides, the support guide creation process included the use of comprehensible language and the provision of implications following a short, simple format. Although such support guide creation responded directly to the questionnaire respondents’ identification of language as being an impediment to using research, their more frequent access of the full-length articles as opposed to the support guides suggests a desire to directly access research. Such a proposition is supported by the actions of participants who were more concerned with accessing articles than they were with the language used in the articles.
In addition to the support guides as a means to bridge the linkage gap between teachers and researchers, this study also provided a common space, a discussion forum for interaction on the article topics. That the discussion forum was accessed less than the resources page highlights the greater importance placed on accessing the resources than discussing them. In the future, provision of more than one article on a given topic may encourage greater discussions with the potential comparisons that could be addressed. It is also worthy to note that although some questionnaire participants were practicing teachers, none of the discussion forum participants were. Such lack of forum participation implies an undervaluing of the social interaction with the researchers. Alternatively, it may speak to the practicing teachers’ busy schedules( Mitton, Adair, McKenzie, Patten, & Perry, 2007).
Beyond who participated in the forum, when examining how the participants contributed, it became evident that the forum did not translate into interaction between researchers and teachers. In fact, although researchers directly responded to some teacher candidates’ messages, the teacher candidates never re-engaged following researchers’ input. Although the research( Sebba, 2007; Williams & Coles, 2003) suggested that teachers would appreciate the opportunity to communicate within social networks, this study’ s findings as supported by other research( Rickinson, 2005) suggest that they may prefer to communicate with each other within their communities of practice.
Future attempts to provide for interaction between teachers and researchers might meet with more success if there were opportunities for face-to-face interaction( Jadad, 1999), community building( Dede, 2000) and / or integration of such discussions into communities of practice( Mathiassen, 2002) which may address time constraints( Mitton, Adair, McKenzie, Patten, & Perry, 2007) and create forums that specifically address a community’ s pressing concerns. I suggest that such additional steps may prove beneficial to achieving the genuine interaction referred to by Lavis et al( 2003).
CONCLUSION
It is evident that this project provided its participants with access to research articles. That such experience would translate to future access is uncertain, as the study did not address the question of individuals finding research articles nor evaluating their quality. Upon reflection on this study’ s findings as a means to reduce the linkage gap between second language researchers and teachers, it is arguable that, despite a concerted, well-informed effort, greater success may be possible with attention to additional considerations. For example, direct contact and partnerships with teachers before undertaking such a project would
ALTHOUGH THE RESEARCH SUGGESTED THAT TEACHERS WOULD APPRECIATE THE OPPORTUNITY TO COMMUNICATE WITHIN SOCIAL NETWORKS, THIS STUDY’ S FINDINGS AS SUPPORTED BY OTHER RESEARCH SUGGEST THAT THEY MAY PREFER TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER WITHIN THEIR COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE.
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