Teachers’ Beliefs & Practices about the Effective Integration of Grammar Instruction
November 2005 - October 2006(Contact: Dr Simon Borg)
Funded By: TESOL International Research Foundation
Other project members:
Professor Anne Burns - Macquarie University, Sydney
Within a framework of teacher cognition research, this project investigates teachers' beliefs and practices vis-à-vis the effective integration of grammar instruction in the adult TESOL classroom. Key aims here are to understand teachers' views about the effective integration of grammar teaching, the strategies they use to achieve such effectiveness, and their rationales for doing so.
A mixed methods study will be adopted to address these aims: detailed qualitative studies of the practices and beliefs of four teachers in diverse ESOL and EFL contexts around the world will be compiled, and a survey of the beliefs about integrated grammar teaching of a sample of teachers of English in a number of other countries will be conducted. Collectively, these data will shed light on what teachers do to integrate grammar effectively into their work and the thinking (including evidence they cite in relation to learning outcomes or other criteria) behind their instructional practices. Existing research on teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching grammar more generally demonstrates that these are shaped by a range of interacting psychological, social, and instructional and institutional factors which impinge on teachers. It is envisaged that the notions of effectiveness in integrating grammar instruction which emerge in this study will be similarly complex and a key outcome of the study will be a greater understanding of this complexity.
This project last updated by Mike Baynham on 2nd November 2005.