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ReaLiTea (Research Literacy for Teachers) is an Erasmus+ project (KA220 HED 000157446) that aims to enhance the research literacy of pre-service and in-service foreign and second language teachers. Research literacy is the ability to meaningfully engage with the collective knowledge of the profession and contribute to it through practice-based research. We strengthen research literacies by addressing both the attitudes and competences associated with reading, using, carrying out, and sharing research in language teaching communities of practice. In doing so, we build sustainable connections between theory and practice in the context of language teachers’ professional development. 

 

While the importance of research-informed teaching is well recognized in the field of additional language teaching and learning today, in reality, practitioners engage with educational research only minimally before or during their classroom experiences. This limits teachers’ reflective practice, self-efficacy, evidence-based decision-making skills, and lifelong professional development. 

 

ReaLiTea brings together international experts from leading institutions in areas of language teacher education, research literacy, digital literacies, teacher identity, action research, professional development, research writing, open scholarship, reflective practice, bi/multilingual education, and inclusive education: 

 

• TU Dortmund University (Germany, Coordinator)

• Heidelberg University of Education (Germany)

• Social Sciences University of Ankara (Türkiye)

• University of Bergen (Norway)

• University of Thessaly (Greece)

• University of York (United Kingdom)

• University of Oxford (United Kingdom)

• University of Vienna (Austria)

• University of Stuttgart (Germany)

 

The core objectives of ReaLiTea are to:

1. develop a research literacy framework that fosters a common understanding among professionals in foreign, second, and additional language teacher education regarding the construct of research literacy 

2. operationalize this research literacy framework to identify measurable criteria of research literacy that language teacher educators and teachers can use for formative (self-)assessment;

3. develop blended learning and self-instruction modules as well as open educational resources to create learning opportunities for language teachers to develop their competence in finding, reading, evaluating, and applying the results of existing relevant research to their own instructional contexts;

4. foster the understanding and production of relevant research in the form of empirical studies and classroom-based inquiry;

5. create authentic collections of different types of research products that language teachers commonly need to engage with, such as summaries of research studies, conference abstracts, and critical reflections, and develop training materials addressing the linguistic and rhetorical features of those genres; and

6. create and foster a digital space for pre-service and in-service language teachers and teacher educators to engage in a digital community of practice.

 

Bridging the gap between educational research and classroom practice, ReaLiTea empowers teachers not only as consumers of research but also as critical agents who engage with, contribute to, and use research to improve language teaching,  learning, and assessment. These activities nurture lifelong professional development. Supporting teachers’ engagement with research increases their knowledge and skills to make research-informed pedagogical decisions and fosters continuous professional learning. 

 

The outcomes of the project are expected to reach thousands of future and practicing foreign and second language teachers across Europe and beyond, supporting them in becoming more reflective, research-literate, and inclusive practitioners. They include: 

 

• An empirically derived model of language teachers’ research literacy across four stages of development;

• A self-assessment tool to support educators in evaluating their research literacy in five dimensions;

• Open educational resources (OER) aligned to the framework, reflecting educator-led and self-study contexts;

• Corpora of authentic written and oral research texts and related training materials; and

• A virtual Community of Practice for language teachers and researchers in language teacher education.

 

Inquiries may be sent to https://www.realitea.info/contact.