Theme: Teacher Research

Dear valued readers,

Welcome to the June issue of NELTA ET Forum. The theme of this issue is Teacher Research. Like all other professions, teachers are facing various challenges in their classrooms on a regular basis. Traditionally, they were supposed to seek support from the ‘experts’ to solve those problems and they were expected to follow the prescribed solution. But there is a growing trend to value teachers not just as consumers but also the producers of knowledge. The recent literature and discussion suggests that teachers can be successful only if they design activities and materials that are appropriate to the context they are working in. This gives teachers control and autonomy over their teaching pedagogy in the classroom and empowers them.

The concept of teacher research believes that teachers need to see themselves and their students as co-constructers of knowledge regarding which pedagogy best suits them. Rather than blaming the system, administration and colleagues, teachers need to put efforts to bring about changes in their classrooms. They should learn to take responsibility for what happens inside their own classes.

To support this, academic institutions can/should encourage teachers to conduct action research. Teachers can collect the everyday classroom issues, and students and teachers can work together to address any issue that occur in their class. This helps teachers to review their classroom practices and become more effective in their efforts.

In line with these arguments, Dr. Paula Rebolledo in her article Teacher Research as Research introduces the concept of Teacher Research and discusses how it is different from the usual ‘academic’ researches. She concludes her paper mentioning how teacher research helps teachers in their professional development.

Similarly, in the second article on Teacher Research as a Means for Continuous Professional Development, Dr.Aslı Lidice GokturkSaglam explains how classroom-based research can have a positive impact on teachers’ professional skills. She has provided ideas and links to resources useful for teachers to learn how to conduct such research.

In the third article, entitled Exploratory Action Research for Teachers, Ms. Babita Sharma Chapagain discusses the concept of exploratory research and shares how she started practicing this type of research in her class. Finally she shares the process adopted to conduct Exploratory Action Research.

In her article entitled Pragmatics Analysis: A Significant Tool in Literature Teaching, Ms. Motikala Dewan presents the pragmatics analysis of the language discourse, context and its function in the William Golding’s novel Lord of the Fliesto, and sees their relevancy in real life situations.She further tries to look at the purpose of language use and its function in the text on the basis of Speech Act Theory of Austin and Relevance, theory of Sperber and Wilson.

Finally, in the last post entitled Teacher Research: From Universities to Himalayan Highlands, one of our editors DN Joshi has presented the perspectives of three scholars on the status of teacher research in Nepal.

Please click on the links below to access the articles in this issue.

Teacher Research as Research by Dr. Paula Rebolledo

Teacher Research as a Means for Continuous Professional Development by Dr.Aslı Lidice GokturkSaglam

Exploratory Action Research for Teachers by Babita Sharma Chapagain

Pragmatics Analysis: A Significant Tool in Literature Teaching by Motikala Subba Dewan

Teacher Research: From Universities to Himalayan Highlands presented by DN Joshi

We hope that the issue will help the readers conceptualize the idea of teacher research and inspire them to reflect their pedagogy to improve their classroom practices. Please write your ideas on the issues discussed in the articles in the form of comments and feedback.

Happy reading!

Issues Editors,

Laxmi Prasad Ojha

D.N. Joshi