Thinking about the teaching-research gap

Some readers of this blog will know that I recently became involved in the Research Literacy for Teachers (ReaLiTea) project, an Erasmus-funded collaboration which aims to empower teachers engage with language education research. When thinking about teachers, research and research literacy, a concept that is often evoked is that of the ‘teaching-research gap’. My concern, which motivated this blog post, is that much discourse about teaching and research seems content to point out that such a gap exists, and perhaps list some superficial reasons why it exists (e.g., teachers’ lack of time), but it seems to stop short of explaining what the gap actually is.  

---

What we can learn from other disciplines about the teaching-research gap

Before I attempt to offer my thoughts about what the teaching-research gap is, I hope you might forgive a short digression.

A family member, who is a practising doctor, recently asked me to proofread a medical article that they wanted to submit to an international journal. This article was like nothing we publish in language education or applied linguistics. In no more than two pages, it contained a brief history of a patient, a description of the examinations that took place, where the author pointed out some atypical and easy-to-miss findings, a walk-through of the doctor’s thinking (supported by a handful of citation), a diagnosis and a list of similar conditions for differential diagnosis. Two pages of X-ray images and a short list of references concluded the article.

The fact that different disciplines have different ways of communicating ideas is perhaps a trivial observation. But what I found more striking was that such communications, by practising doctors, appear to be greatly valued in the medical community, they are actively published, and they seem to be widely read both in medical schools and by professionals who wish to keep up-to-date.

I wouldn’t claim, on the basis of a singular observation, that there is no ‘practice-research gap’ in the medical profession. However, this observation does tell me is that such gaps are shaped by the ways our communities are structured. That is to say, they are neither monolithic nor inevitable. Having made this observation, I would now like to return to the world of language education.

---

Rethinking
the teaching-research gap

From this starting point, I eventually come to the realization that what we describe as a ‘teaching-research gap’ is actually two very different points of differentiation, one which is hard and unavoidable, and one which is more malleable.

Why teaching and research
must be different

When proofreading the medical article I mentioned above, I kept thinking “Why can’t we write like this?”.

There are, of course, valid reasons why the articles we produce in language education and its informing disciplines are so different in length, structure and topic. For one, people working in the sciences usually have their ontological and epistemological questions resolved. For better or for worse, this is not the case in our field(s): we still struggle to understand language, both as a universal capacity to speak and in the sense of specific languages. In addition, education involves the transmission of language, values and knowledge structures that keep shifting. It would seem odd to argue that we need to fix these in place for teaching to take place more efficiently.

Dividing labour in knowledge production

Dealing with such challenges means that a lot of scholarly work requires a certain degree of methodological specialization and a division of labour that keeps part of academic work away from day-to-day teaching. This distance often makes it seem as if research is at a disconnect with practice, and some people have gone as far as to argue that such research is irrelevant to teachers. Péter Medgyes’ aphorism is an example of such discourse:

Teachers are primarily people of action: they do not need highfalutin theories and elaborate words to do a decent job.

Péter Medgyes (2017)

I believe that such proclamations are misguided. What they suggest is that we, as a profession, have learnt all that there is to know about language, learners and learning, and that anything more is unnecessary. There are important political arguments against this kind of ideological anti-intellectualism that it propagates (see Giroux, 2023 and Hofstadter, 1963 for more on that), but I will not go into these now. What I will argue is that such disconnects are inevitable, because they build on the division of labour in knowledge production. However, textbooks and structure learning courses, where instructors mediate between raw research and its applications help to bridge this gap.

Bridging the divide

The way I see it, developing research literacy cannot about closing this particular gap. That is to say, our aim should not be to force teachers to engage with those aspects of scholarship that seek to define language, or to understand psychological constructs such as language anxiety or motivation and so on. This is not to say that intellectually curious teachers cannot engage with such topics. But when they do, they straddle a structural divide between our specializations, and that makes them exceptional.

---

Where teaching and research can meet

What I would like to suggest is that developing research literacy should be about highlight the often-neglected part of research that is most directly relevant to teaching. And to do so requires us to reflect on the points where teachers and researchers are similar.

Innate similarities

If we deconstruct research to its essentials, this involves an inquisitive attitude, an ability for structured engagement with information, and a desire to create new knowledge. Such qualities, I would argue, are qualities that are core to teaching as much as they are to research. Teachers constantly face problems that require convincing answers, and a great part of our job when we teach involves observing our students, trying to understand their behaviour and trying to predict the outcomes of our, and their, actions. Good teachers and good researchers, I would go on to suggest, also apply themselves to making positive change happen and to challenging unjust orders of things.  

If there is a divide between teachers and researchers in spite of such similarity, then this seems to be a very different kind of ‘teaching-research gap’ from the one above. This divide is not the product of structure; rather, it is manufactured much closer to the surface.

Manufactured differences

This kind of ‘teacher-research gap’ seems to be part of an ongoing trend to deskill teachers and to demote them to the role of information delivery technicians. This trend, which appears to be increasing in intensity, involves a transformation of the knowledge landscape, in which rigid curricula and set standards ensure that information flows in a controlled way. Preventing teachers’ access to information (though paywalls, lack of training and lack of incentives to engage with research) is a way to exclude teachers from the decision-making processes about what will be taught and how. It is a form of manufactured ignorance which threatens the core of democracy.

It is important not to see this ‘teaching-research gap’ through a deficit perspective. This means that we should not aim to train teachers to have the same skills as researchers, on the assumption that the latter are more ‘prestigious’ than the former. Doing so would just perpetuate the discourse that seeks to marginalize and disempower teachers. When we try to develop research literacy, what we aim to do is give teachers access to those concepts and methods that help them resolve questions that are relevant to their practice, with confidence, authority and independence. Helping teachers to step out of their role as marginalized technicians also means developing a common vocabulary that helps us to see the commonalities of work in teaching and in research. And, lastly, it also means that we should should aim to develop shared discourse spaces where we can explore these commonalities together.  

---

Bringing it all together

I wrote this post in an attempt to clarify my own thinking about what the ‘teaching-research gap’ is. I do not claim that I have reached a definitive answer by writing, but I do believe that I have made a number of useful observations that can guide me as I work in the ReaLiTea project.

The teacher-research gap
is not unitary

The first observation is that the ‘teaching-research gap’ can refer to two different things. One is the division of labour in knowledge production. This is a structural feature of the knowledge landscape, and we should not pretend it doesn’t exist, nor should we decry its existence. The second one is the deskilling of teachers. As I argued above, this is an ongoing process that we can, and should, challenge.

The teacher-research gap
is not neutral

A second observation is that discourse about the ‘teaching-research gap’ is not politically neutral. Discouraging teachers from reflective action and engagement with information (the second type of ‘gap’) is part of an ongoing attempt to reduce education to the training of an efficient workforce rather than an educated citizenry. Instrumentalising the structure of the knowledge landscape (the first ‘gap’) in order to portray research as irrelevant, inconsequential and unnecessary and arguing for the superiority of ‘common sense’ is nothing less than populist anti-intellectualism.

The teacher-research gap
is not just about teaching

There is a third observation that comes to my mind as I write these lines. Although my intention, as a language teacher educator, is to help language teachers become more effective and more content in their roles, I am finding it hard to maintain focus. It is difficult to think of any aspect of (language) education that concerns only (language) education. Jan Blommaert, whose wisdom is acutely missed, bade us farewell with the reminder that:

In a world in which knowledge is at once more widely available than ever before, and more exclusive and elitist than ever before, knowledge is a battlefield and those professionally involved in it must be aware of that. […] Which is why we need an activist attitude, one in which the battle for power-through-knowledge is engaged, in which knowledge is activated as a key instrument for the liberation of people, and as a central tool underpinning any effort to arrive at a more just and equitable society.

Jan Blommaert (2020)

Developing the research literacy of language teachers is – in my eyes at least – a move in this battle for power-through-knowledge. It may seem naïve to hope that one can reverse the processes I described (Julian Edge, my doctoral supervisor, had called this fight for education ‘the long defeat’), and yet here we are: There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail...

---