Disseminating Your Action Research: A Practical Guide to Sharing the Results of Practitioner Research
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In ELT, as in other aspects of education, teacher research is recognised as an important form of inquiry because it enables practitioners to search for answers to the questions they might have about the phenomena that occur in their own classrooms. When teachers choose to engage in research, they learn about their practices, their learners, and their professional identity. Given the organic nature of its processes and the bottom-up direction of the inquiry, teacher research is a powerful form of professional learning. Without having to rely on the direction provided by those outside the classroom, teachers can use research to generate knowledge that is meaningful for them and useful for those within the immediate learning environment, i.e., themselves and their learners. In addition, while this research-derived knowledge is primarily valuable because it is directly relevant to teachers’ and learners’ needs, it might also resonate with other practitioners. While not absolutely necessary, there is value in sharing this kind of knowledge with other professionals, irrespective of whether they are colleagues at one’s school or based elsewhere. This chimes with the idea that one highly effective means of engaging in professional development is learning from one’s peers, particularly when that learning is based on the knowledge a teacher has distilled from their research efforts. Even though knowledge based on anecdotal evidence or experience has its merits when shared with fellow professionals, the knowledge teachers create via research is especially significant given their attempt to be systematic about the process of seeking answers to their questions (Mercer and Xerri 2018). However, despite the substantial amount of literature on doing teacher research that has been published over the years—consisting of guides and reports written by both academics and practitioners (e.g., Freeman 1998; Kuchah, Salama, and Salvi 2022; Xerri 2022)—there is a relative lack of practical guidance on the dissemination process itself. Knowing where and how to share research findings is one of the areas that are difficult for teachers and that they would benefit from support with (Cárdenas 2025), and this is where Mertler’s Disseminating Your Action Research comes in handy for the audience of classroom practitioners it is aimed at.
Source: ELT Journal
DOI: 10.1093/elt/ccaf004
Author: Daniel Xerri
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4407120098