Creating research opportunities for pre-sessional EAP practitioners
Barbara Katharina Reschenhofer
Webster Vienna Private University
ABSTRACT
In this article, I discuss the benefits of creating research opportunities for fixed-term teaching staff on pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. Now more than ever, active engagement with scholarship is becoming increasingly important for both individual EAP practitioners as well as for the field of EAP as a whole: Universities recruiting pre-sessional teaching staff require applicants to demonstrate initial engagement with research on their resumes, whilst EAP departments rely on the output of innovative and impactful research to dispel the false image of EAP being a service provider rather than an academic field in its own right. To map out some of the opportunities and challenges for pre-sessional instructor-researchers, I first highlight logistical obstacles and ethical dilemmas before discussing the advantages of collaborative research projects to circumvent some of these challenges. Acknowledging the value and merit of reflective and semi-formal scholarship writing in EAP, I then also draw attention to the importance of original, primary research.
KEYWORDS: ethical research in EAP, pre-sessional research in EAP, collaborative scholarship in EAP, barriers to research, ethics literacy.
INTRODUCTION & CONTEXT
Every summer, universities welcome external colleagues to teach and tutor on their pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. Whilst the top priorities of pre-sessional staff of course comprise the student-centred teaching and learning-oriented assessment across numerous cohorts, continuous professional development (CPD) too plays a key role for everyone involved in the design and delivery of a summer pre-sessional. As engagement with CPD and research is increasingly seen as a crucial attribute for EAP practitioners on teaching contracts, I want to, in this article, advocate for why pre-sessional teaching should be more effectively included in scholarship and research activities during and beyond their fixed-term employment.
Although I personally view teaching and research as inherently intertwined, I appreciate that colleagues with particularly intensive teaching contracts (during as well as beyond the summer months) simply do not have the capacity to engage in scholarship to the same degree as a fully funded postdoctoral researcher for instance might. That being said, I believe that teaching professionals inadvertently collect valuable data each time they enter the EAP classroom. Educators who, on average, spend between ten and fifteen weekly contact hours with the same cohort will arguably become more aware of patterns in learning behaviour, current issues with popular digital tools, or recurring themes in student concerns than, for instance, colleagues with a less teaching-intensive schedule. An intensive summer pre-sessional thus ideally lends itself to the pursuit of impactful research projects focused on areas including but not limited to student motivation, formative feedback loops, or multimodal learning technologies.
Empowering pre-sessional teaching staff to participate in research serves a dual purpose. Whilst increased engagement in scholarship supports the growth of EAP as an academic field, the opportunity to pursue research can allow practitioners to further develop their academic identities by becoming more evidence-based in their practice. As aptly pointed out by Ding (2019), it is crucial to ‘invest in practitioners so that they can achieve an identity, through development and scholarship, that affords them the recognition and agency needed to fully participate in and influence the university’ (p.68). Fixed-term pre-sessional teaching staff tend to, due to their temporary contracts and teaching-focused roles, have fewer opportunities to contribute to the wider scholarship in EAP, which can, in turn, cause ruptures and disconnects amongst EAP practitioners. Rather than widening the gap between teaching and research, I argue that integrating the two can lead to practitioners being more confident in their craft, secure in their teaching philosophy, and intentional in their approach to course and assessment design. Drawing on Archer (2003, p.120), Ding (2019) moreover states that ‘professional identity is reflexively indexed to ethics and action’ (p.64). With this article, I wish to explore this connectedness of ethics, identity, and agency. By referring to relevant scholarship and autoethnographically reflecting on my own experiences as a former fixed-term EAP practitioner with a vested interest in research, I will outline some of the challenges pre-sessional instructor-researchers may face and propose strategies for how these might be overcome.
PROMOTING ETHICAL RESEARCH IN EAP
The pursuit of ethically sound research, especially in education, calls for both practical experience in the field as well as procedural knowledge of relevant research practices. Whilst tangible experience allows the researcher to identify and conceptualize innovative research questions, knowledge of research practices is crucial for the ethical design and execution of a study or critical enquiry. An EAP practitioner who can demonstrate both will be better able to wield agency as a contributor to the wider scholarship. Academia, however, is far from self-explanatory. To fixed-term staff in particular, the internal processes and protocols of a temporary employer university may not always appear as straight-forward or transparent. For instance, the criteria for studies which must undergo ethical pre-approval will differ from one university to the next, and the time it takes for a study to be pre-approved may range from weeks to months, depending on the institution. By proactively informing both fixed-term and longer-term staff about the winding paths to research, EAP departments can promote the autonomous production of research output on a greater level.
Encouraging instructors of EAP to engage in ethical research represents a positive step for any institution that aims to promote evidence-based approaches to planning, teaching, and assessment whilst also keeping research close to practice. Impactful scholarship is moreover, as previously mentioned, important for EAP to attain recognition as an academic field in its own right (Webster, 2022, p.2; see also Ding and Bruce, 2017). Additionally, more and more universities are listing engagement with scholarship and CPD amongst their desirable and sometimes even essential criteria for the successful recruitment on their pre-sessional EAP courses. Research by Webster (2022) suggests this growing demand for scholarship to be one of the main motivators for why EAP practitioners are engaging with research more closely as of late (p.7). Indeed, many teaching and learning departments have long been promoting the professional development of staff by offering accreditation schemes, coordinating CPD sessions, and organizing university-internal conferences. I personally can attest to UK universities – and specifically their EAP departments and language centres – being exceptionally supportive in this regard.
The readiness of departments to enable and the willingness of practitioners to commit to life-long learning is, as established, seldom the issue when it comes to increasing research activity in EAP. Rather, it is logistical obstacles and constraints that appear to be a major factor as to why certain research projects do not materialize and why others end up being published without prior consultation of an ethics committee (see Stockley and Balkwill, 2013, p.0). Although the adherence to ethical guidelines is particularly important for studies which involve participants, the red tape around ethical pre-approval processes often deters researchers from pursuing such projects (Petrova and Barclay, 2019, pp.1-2).
LOGISTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR ETHICAL PRE-SESSIONAL RESEARCH
Because university ethics committees receive such high volumes of proposals and applications each year, it comes as no surprise that a decision on a given study will often take several weeks, if not months. Purely logistically, this will already make it difficult for a fixed-term pre-sessional EAP practitioner to attain pre-approval for a study they wish to conduct over the course of a 6-week contract, for instance. Furthermore, seeking pre-approval in advance, before the practitioner’s fixed-term employment officially commences, will likely not even be possible, as a formal affiliation with the university is often a non-negotiable pre-requisite for a researcher to have their proposal evaluated by the respective ethics committee. Of course, if the EAP practitioner is employed with another university prior to their fixed-term employment elsewhere, they may opt to seek pre-approval with said university’s ethics committee. Though this would at least solve the issue of gaining ethical pre-approval, it creates entirely new issues surrounding the question of affiliation: If University A formally approves a study, this implies affiliation between the research conducted and University A. If the data, however, is collected on a pre-sessional course at University B but University B is in no way informed of this or involved in the pre-approval, this in and of itself becomes unethical (especially if the EAP practitioner in question is employed to teach and not to conduct unaffiliated research during work hours with University B).
When a participant-centred research project does attain pre-approval, ethical issues can still arise further along in the researching process. Any study which examines participants over a longer period of time is prone to being affected by unexpected discoveries or unanticipated changes in the research environment. It is therefore essential for instructor-researchers to be made aware of the precautions they might need to take under such circumstances. For instance, participants may experience changes in their personal lives, which might affect the study's ethical robustness, or relevant data might emerge from unexpected and unaccounted for sources (Miller, 2013, pp.142, 147). To prevent such ethical dilemmas, pre-sessional researchers may be well advised to include an ‘incidental/ unexpected findings policy’ (Griffin and Leibetseder, 2019) in their research proposals.
However, it cannot be expected of an EAP practitioner who is entirely new to research to be aware of every such intricacy, requirement, or caveat. Whilst every researcher certainly holds responsibility to do their due diligence before commencing a research project, departmental support and guidance in terms of the more formal and logistical matters can easily be offered by experts and/ or colleagues who have more extensive experience with more complex-leaning research projects. What is more, ethical standards and guidelines change over time. It was not long ago that universities across the globe updated their ethics policies to explicitly require researchers to obtain informed consent from their participants (see Tulyakul and Meepring, 2020, p.86). As the ethical landscape of academia continues to rapidly evolve, the continuous development and adaptive flexibility of aspiring and established researchers alike will remain necessary. Whether this will mean for introductory ethics trainings to be incorporated into pre-sessional inductions or whether resources like researcher handbooks or ethics quick-guides provided asynchronously, I believe that even the most subtle encouragement can inspire teaching staff to become more actively involved in research during their fixed-term contracts.
Aside from offering introductory trainings and resources at the start of a pre-sessional, another solution to problems pertaining to logistics and time constraints may be the proactive collaboration between fixed-term and permanent (or longer-term) staff. A more permanent member of staff could, for instance, apply for pre-approval for a joint project long before the fixed-term colleague’s work at the university commences. Such arrangements can be convenient for internal researchers who require the facilitative collaboration of full-time teaching practitioners to collect primary data, for instance. Sharing responsibility and workload on a co-authored paper in this way not only solves logistical complications, but it also enables colleagues to benefit from one another’s unique perspectives. What often makes pre-sessional teaching teams so effective in spite of the fast-paced teaching and learning environment is the fact that different individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences come together to work toward a shared goal. Moreover, intentionally collaborating on and sharing the credit for a joint research project can also prevent fixed-term staff from feeling exploited by internal researchers using the data arisen from the fixed-term practitioner’s pre-sessional classroom activities, assessment, and feedback. Of course, although collaboration and community-building certainly should be encouraged, opportunities for valuable research should not solely depend on an EAP practitioner’s ability to find a willing collaborator or co-author.
Aside from helping lift research projects off the ground, targeted collaboration can also be regarded as a promising avenue for future ethics procedures to become more thorough, efficient, and reliable. In their discussion of research ethics, Griffin and Leibetseder (2019), for instance, cite McCormack et al. (2012), who propose a more ‘participative approach to ethics reviews, with relevant researchers being more involved in the related discussions’ (Griffin and Leibetseder, 2019). Similarly, ‘subject-specific templates’ (Petrova and Barclay, 2019, p.9) and ethics reviews ‘by committees within [their] respective academic departments’ (p.9) could be a step in the right direction for researchers of EAP as well. Petrova and Barclay (2019) moreover speculate that ‘[p]erhaps, in the not too distant future, existing Research Ethics Committees will turn into local training and advice centres, while much larger ethics review teams do most of the work online’ (p.11). For studies in EAP which do not entail the collection or analysis of exceptionally sensitive data, field-specific templates and proactive trainings might indeed be a viable option for research proposals to be processed more expeditiously. It appears that at some – though certainly not all – universities, designated ethics committees have already formed to oversee the research conducted at specific schools or colleges within the respective universities. Moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to ethics appears to not only be more time-efficient but also more thorough than pervasive ‘ideas of 'ethical universalism' across (and within) disciplines’ (Miller, 2023, p.148; see also Reissman, 2005, p.487).
THE MERIT OF REFLECTION AND IMPORTANCE OF ORIGINALITY
Although this article advocates for the inclusion of pre-sessional teaching staff in research activities, it does not imply that a large percentage of EAP practitioners do not already conduct and disseminate valuable research at present. In fact, the abundance of EAP and teaching and learning conferences, BALEAP events, and language and literacy webinars clearly indicates that practitioners consistently contribute to the state of the field. As an EAP practitioner who greatly values open and accessible scholarship, I have also found it exciting to observe the rise of semi-formal outlets wherein EAP practitioners are now able to share academic think pieces or reflective accounts in written formats. However, as much as texts of more reflective-academic genres, such as this very article, constitute an important element of peer exchange in the EAP community, primary research must not be neglected as an important and scientific part of the scholarship in our field.
Returning to the aspect of research ethics for studies involving participant data, I want to draw attention to the need for greater ethics literacy in the realm of teaching and learning. Stockley and Balkwill (2013) found that researchers from the field had not seldomly 'conducted research that should have undergone research ethics board (REB) review, but did not; that should have included a consent process for the use of student data or previous work, but did not; or that started out as program evaluation and became research without meeting the criteria of ethically acceptable research conduct' (p.0).
It is not always clear whether a researcher’s failure to seek ethical approval stems from a lack of awareness, a disdain for the red tape, or other reasons. Neither is it always clear what the consequences are for research projects which have been conducted and published without the necessary pre-approval. Whilst some researchers will view this lack of transparency around possible consequences as an invitation to confuse ethical requirements for recommendations, others may outright avoid conducting any research at all that could potentially cause problems or raise concerns.
As a perhaps less daunting and gentler introduction to scholarship writing, EAP practitioners may therefore opt to, as previously mentioned, write reflective pieces or academic blog posts for publication in their home university's journals or magazines (Webster, 2022, p.10). Reflective and semi-formal texts will typically contain more anecdotal information rather than concrete data and therefore, generally, not require pre-approval by an ethics committee. Furthermore, less formal formats are often more accessible in terms of style, format, and medium. If a pre-sessional practitioner has delivered a CPD session, for instance, they can choose to further elaborate on their topic in writing and make it instantly accessible to an even wider audience as an academic blogpost instead of having it be forthcoming for several months only to then be hidden behind a paywall.
Although academic reflections and think pieces certainly have merit and constitute an invaluable and more accessible means of sharing new thoughts and ideas with colleagues, it is important to remember the necessity for original, primary research in EAP. If dauntingly complicated approval processes become a growing reason for the stagnation of original research, then this can have detrimental consequences for the state of the field. Researchers who resort to sharing their insights on a purely anecdotal level or by relying on existing, published studies to support their own observations run the risk of confirmation bias: If I make a seemingly significant observation in my own classroom but do not have the time, capacity, or resources to conduct primary research to confirm my tentative and informal findings, my only other apparent option might be to find research which affirms my intuitive conclusions. However, I cannot be sure that a new study of my own would have not, in fact, disproven my hypothesis and thus represented a valuable counterargument to the existing research on the same topic. Even for claims and conclusions which may appear plausible enough not to necessarily demand quantitative evidence, the provision of concrete data to support said claims adds a layer of credibility to the research which, in turn, adds credibility to the academic field of EAP overall.
CONCLUSION
Until ethical pre-approval processes become more efficient and researcher-friendly, EAP departments can take meaningful steps toward the empowerment of instructor-researchers. As discussed, brief segues into research opportunities during pre-sessional induction weeks or short handbooks on research ethics can be a deciding first step in the promotion of pre-sessional scholarship. Collaborations between permanent and fixed-term staff can potentially not only result in fresh perspectives, emerging theories, and ground-breaking insights for the field of EAP, but they can also help solve logistical issues pertaining to affiliation and time constraints. Encouraging instructor-researchers to collect and analyse primary data additionally may help combat the repeated recycling of potentially outdated datasets and findings to support new theoretical publications, such as systematic reviews or anecdotal reflections. To best support instructor-researchers, universities and their individual departments should moreover strive to clearly discern between what is a strict ethical requirement for primary research versus what is an optional recommendation for ethically sound enquiry. Addressing these and further questions, in my view, represents a promising start to the creation of a more accessible and inclusive research environment for pre-sessional practitioners of EAP.
Address for correspondence: bkresch@hotmail.com
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