Ethical dilemmas of teacher research in applied linguistics

Abstract

Teacher research (TR) is teachers’ systematic examination of their pedagogy and/or their students’ learning within their own classrooms. Language TR presents different ethical dilemmas from other applied linguistics research due to the researcher's positioning and TR's situatedness. Teacher-researchers’ dual roles as instructor and researcher allow unique perspectives but also raise questions of subjectivity. Because TR is situated in specific contexts, teacher-researchers’ ethical decisions require special attention to interpersonal effects not captured in institutional ethics reviews. This article presents qualitative analyses of data collected during a semester-long graduate course introducing language teachers to classroom action research. We documented participants’ development as researchers through recorded class discussions and their reflective writing. We analyzed the data recursively, focusing on ethically important moments. Some ethical issues paralleled those in the TR literature while others were specific to each participant's context. Participants’ reflexivity was crucial for managing these context-specific dilemmas as some situations lacked a clear answer. We illustrate our findings with vignettes from participating teacher-researchers exemplifying these dilemmas. We conclude by discussing ongoing challenges in language TR and by recommending future directions.