Making Research Work for Language Teachers

In language education, the word 'research' can sound like a remote echo: an echo of something that happens in universities, is published in journals we rarely read, and is written in a language that seems different from ours. Yet, in our classrooms, we constantly observe, test ideas, and adjust. In a sense, we are already doing research —we just don’t always name it as such.

This is the central take-home message in a webinar by Carolyn (Caro) Blume at theTeacher Development Webinars series (9 August 2025). In her talk, Caro explored how teachers can integrate research meaningfully into their professional lives, and how we —at the ReaLiTea project— work towards supporting this integration.

Making Research Work for Language Teachers

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Two senses of teacher research

In the webinar, Caro distinguished between two kinds of teacher research. The first is the informal, reflective inquiry most teachers do instinctively. This involves things like noticing patterns in the learners' output and interactions, reflecting, and tweaking our lessons. The second is systematic inquiry: deliberately planned, carefully documented, and often shared beyond our immediate context. The challenge is that often, teachers and stakeholders dismiss the importance or meaningfulness of the first, and do not feel confident enough to engage in the second. The ReaLiTea Project seeks to bridge these, affirming the legitimacy of everyday inquiry while offering pathways towards more formal projects.

Why it matters

Teacher research is not only about improving lessons; it is also about agency. By deciding which questions to ask and how to investigate them, teachers move from a position where they can only enact other people’s findings to being producers of professional knowledge. The benefits extend beyond the classroom: greater confidence, stronger professional identity, and renewed curiosity.

For language teachers, in particular, this value multiplies. Working across cultures already fosters openness and collaboration; structured inquiry can deepen these connections, feeding into a global conversation about effective, inclusive language teaching.

Barriers

Despite its promise, teacher research remains underused. Studies repeatedly point out that classroom teachers read little or no research each year (at least not formal research). This is due to barriers at multiple levels: individual (lack of time, confidence), institutional (workload, limited recognition), and systemic (policy, funding). Language and accessibility compound the problem, with much research locked behind paywalls and academic English.

The ReaLiTea Project’s approach

The ReaLiTea Project addresses these challenges in three ways:

1. Awareness: We have developed a research literacy framework, which helps language teachers develop a broader understanding of what research literacy encompasses, where their strengths as teacher-researchers lie, and how they might continue to develop as educators.

2. Access: We actively work to make research more accessible to all. Our partnership with OASIS provides access to plain-language summaries of peer-reviewed studies. Additionally, we have developed three corpora of research communication (articles, OASIS summaries, & conference presentations) to support teachers as both readers and writers.

3. Community: We have created an online space for sharing resources, collaborating, and co-constructing knowledge across borders.

But these are just the first of many things to come. Future plans include interactive self-assessment tools, open training materials, and multilingual OASIS summaries.

Ultimately, research is not an add-on to teaching, but an extension of what reflective teachers already do. By naming it, supporting it, and sharing it, we strengthen both our practice and our profession.

If this resonates with you, you may want to watch the full webinar linked above, then join the conversation: share your reflections in the comments or tell us how research fits into your own teaching story!