Action research in teacher education: Cases from elt teacher trainees

Abstract

Collaborative action research is a powerful form teacher development. In the recent years, it is becoming a common and a popular tool in English Language Teacher Education by taking its place as an important component in pre-service teacher education. Since it is still relatively uncommon for teachers to conduct action research studies in their own teaching, we aim at familiarizing our English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher trainees with the major characteristics and procedures of action research by also giving them opportunities to conduct their first collaborative action research studies. The present study discusses ELT trainees' first implementations of collaborative action research studies in the teacher training programme. Four collaborative action research cases conducted by ELT teacher trainees focusing on their own solutions and conclusions to their unique problems related to classroom silence, motivation, and vocabulary learning are discussed. The results indicate the positive role of action research as an important component of teacher education.