27.2218, FYI: Call for Contributions: Politics of Research in Language Education

Mon May 16 14:26:31 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2218. Mon May 16 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2218, FYI: Call for Contributions: Politics of Research in Language Education

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Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 10:26:23
From: Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini [mirhosseini at alzahra.ac.ir]
Subject: Call for Contributions: Politics of Research in Language Education

Call for Contributions: 
Politics of Research in Language Education

Editors:

Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini
Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

Damian J. Rivers
Future University Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan

Research may be perceived as an always-welcome practice innocently associated
with discovery, understanding, and learning. However, there have been
occasional cries of dissent vis-à-vis the all-out embracement of research.
Smith (1999) bluntly puts research in the spotlight as ‘probably one of the
dirtiest words’ from the perspective of indigenous communities. Such concerns
can caution against the taken-for-granted neutrality of research. In addition
to association with various extra-academic elements such as colonialism, a
crucial concern about research is its inextricable association with academia
and academic knowledge. Knowledge outside academia has always been created and
re-created through diverse modes of inquiry and learning but academic
knowledge has been strongly associated with certain forms of research within
strictly defined frameworks and processes that have extended the scope of
influences on academic research trends far beyond mere thirst for learning and
understanding. 

Although this probable partiality of the essence of academic research tends to
be generally ignored, the interested nature of research has been even less
acknowledged in the area of language education compared with other fields of
inquiry. The very idea of (English) language education itself has been
scrutinized in terms of its ideological and sociopolitically-positioned nature
and this has been partially received as viable discourse in the field (e.g.
Pennycook, 1998). The specific issue of language education research has been
subjected to such scrutiny in rare cases like Alderson’s (2009) work on ‘The
Micropolitics of Research and Publication’. Nonetheless, despite the overall
recognition of the importance of politically-sensitive understandings of
issues in language education, the discourse community of the field remains
somewhat disinterested in problematizing the processes and practices of
research as anything more than a neutral truth-seeking endeavor.    

This volume problematizes research in the field as inherently loaded and
political in nature. The book does not aim to tackle the interconnections
between research and politics as such, as for example is the case in Kaplan
and Levine’s (1997) edited collection. Rather, it intends to revisit language
education research as essentially political in almost all its aspects and
elements in themselves, including topics, methodologies, settings,
participants, data, and analysis, as well as funding, publishing, and the
teaching of research methodology. Potential chapters are invited addressing
ontological, epistemological, sociocultural, political, economic,
institutional, etc. aspects of language education research in terms of
prevalent research topics, dominant methodologies, peer review and
publication, funding, teaching research methodology, etc. Possible issues for
exploration include, but are not limited to the following:

- What are the research methods most widely used in language education studies
and taught in academic programs of the field and why?
- What are the most frequently researched topics in the field and how have
they come to be agreed upon as the most important concerns?
- What are the underlying epistemological positions of the prevalent research
problems, methods, and theories of language and learning in language education
studies? Has the embracement of such epistemologies been conscious or
unconscious? 
- What is the role of peer review processes and publishing mechanisms in
promoting/hindering the reproduction of certain research perspectives and
practices? 
- How are funding agencies influenced by dominant research trends in language
education and how do they influence these trends?
- What is the role of academic policies including promotion mechanisms in
shaping the research involvements of faculty members in research areas related
to language education?
- What is the role of the teaching/learning atmosphere of departments of
language education in shaping graduate research in the field?
- How do the so-called globalization forces on the one hand, and local
sociocultural features on the other, influence research topics, methodologies,
and publications in the field?
- Is there any possibility of language education research outside academia
and, if yes, what are the realizations and the possible challenges of such
research?

Proposals for theoretical discussions as well as empirical studies based on
different methodological approaches and across different sociocultural and
geographical contexts are welcome. Potential contributors are invited to
submit a 300-word proposal to the co-editors by June 15 2016. Publication will
be sought with a major international publisher. 

Dr. Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini (Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran)
mirhosseini at alzahra.ac.ir 
Dr. Damian Rivers (Future University Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan)
rivers at fun.ac.jp

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

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