TEFL teachers’ and non-TEFL teachers’ perceptions on the relationship between SLA research and language pedagogy

• Authors: Amir Zand-Moghadam , Hussein Meihami
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This study explores TEFL teachers’ and non-TEFL teachers’ perceptions about the relationship between second language acquisition (SLA) research and language pedagogy with regard to familiarity, involvement, accessibility, consultation, relevance, and usefulness of SLA research in L2 pedagogy. To this end, 83 teachers, 40 TEFL teachers and 43 non-TEFL teachers, participated in this study. They filled out a questionnaire addressing their perceptions about SLA research and language pedagogy. The results revealed that the majority of TEFL teachers involved in doing research, at least as their educational term projects, while mostly no contribution was reported by non-TEFL teachers. In addition, TEFL teachers insisted that L2 teachers need to be involved in SLA research to be successful in their teaching career, while non-TEFL teachers were of the opposite opinion. Moreover, it was revealed that TEFL teachers considered the knowledge gained from research studies relevant and useful to their classroom actions, whereas non-TEFL teachers saw their experience more important for managing their classroom actions. Although both groups had contradictory perceptions of the relationship between SLA research and language pedagogy, they showed some common points in this regard. That is, both groups reported on their difficulty in having access to the research materials; they also expressed their willingness to do research.

Keywords

EN

SLA research; L2 pedagogy; TEFL teachers; L2 research familiarity

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Language and Cultural Education
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 233-256

Dates

published

2016-09-01

online

2016-11-08

Contributors

author

Amir Zand-Moghadam

• Allameh Tabataba’I University, Tehran,

author

Hussein Meihami

• Shiraz University, Shiraz,

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/jolace-2016-0034