34.1866, FYI: Research Cultures in Applied Linguistics

Tue Jun 13 01:05:02 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1866. Tue Jun 13 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.1866, FYI: Research Cultures in Applied Linguistics

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Date: 12-Jun-2023
From: Lee  McCallum [lmccall2 at ed.ac.uk]
Subject: Research Cultures in Applied Linguistics 

Research culture has been defined in multiple ways. At its simplest,
research culture is broadly understood as “the way we do research
around here” (Hill, 1999, p.1). This ‘way’ is game-like in that it is
governed by rules, customs and norms. Yet, this simple understanding
masks the volume of those rules, customs and norms, and it also masks
the complexity involved in constructing, developing, changing, and
critiquing particular research cultures. This is true for the research
cultures that exist in Higher Education (HE) because many stakeholders
are involved in such cultures (e.g., senior management, institution
support staff, faculty members, funding bodies and academic
publishers). HE Research cultures are predominantly driven by top-down
inter-connected government and institutional policies. These policies
set out the rules, customs and norms which are to be followed and they
shape the behaviours, values and beliefs that underpin the desired
culture. However, the success of these research cultures depends on
the ‘buy in’ from many stakeholders. A key group of stakeholders is
faculty members. Faculty members are ultimately tasked with attracting
research funding, producing research and stimulating the production of
new knowledge through mentoring research students and junior
colleagues in their respective disciplines/fields of interest.

Faculty are expected to hold the necessary values and beliefs and
exhibit behaviours that allow the top-down research culture from HE
management to flourish. However, the top-down nature of a research
culture and the fact it is a learned, potentially engrained behaviour
means it is open to tensions and challenges from faculty (Cheetham,
2007). These tensions arise from the pressure on faculty to bring
policies to life in real ‘on the job’ terms which inevitably impact
relationships between internal HE management and support staff as well
as external funding bodies and academic publishers.

In the case of Applied Linguistics, understanding these tensions is
becoming ever more important. At the time of writing, our field faces
an unprecedented level of decline in many countries. This decline is
best evidenced by the present cull of faculty employment in university
departments (e.g., see Weale, 2022), a lack of past investment
globally (e.g., see Watermeyer et al., 2021), and in some cases, the
complete removal of university language and linguistics degrees in
some regions (The British Academy and University Council of Modern
Languages (UCML), 2019). The current situation means our research is
not only under threat, but it is increasingly difficult to exist
within the current HE research culture because our existence is
threatened, and our work is devalued. In contexts where our work is
valued, we face increasing pressure to justify that value, compete for
research funding, publish prolifically, and persuade stakeholders that
our work has rigour and economic and social worth.

Although it is true that we see concrete evidence of how our
colleagues comply with and/or challenge existing research cultures
through work which tackles inequalities in funding and publication
demands (e.g., see Habibie, 2022; Habibie & Hyland, 2019) and rigour
initiatives such as the ‘Open Science’ movement in Applied Linguistics
(Al-Hoorie & Hiver, 2023), and conference-level promotion of Open
Applied Linguistics (American Association of Applied Linguistics
(AAAL), 2023; British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL),
2023), we believe much of how our colleagues currently navigate
research cultures and possibly operate in sub-cultures is unknown in
many contexts.

This edited volume provides a platform for exploring HE research
cultures and how faculty in Applied Linguistics exist within these
cultures at the current time.

We invite colleagues to contribute theoretical or empirical chapters.

Key dates

Publication Steps                               Provisional Dates
Abstracts due                                   31st July 2023
Notification of acceptance by editors           14th August 2023
Chapters to be submitted for peer review        12th February 2024
Peer review                                     February 2024 – May
2024
Final chapters due for editing                  31st July 2024
Manuscript submitted to publisher               14th August 2024

Call information is at:

https://leemccallumnet.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/call-for-chapters_r
c-final.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

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