Applied Linguistics & Language Teacher Education

Empowering Language Teachers through Research Literacy: International Approaches to Professional Learning and Development

Empowering Language Teachers through Research Literacy: International Approaches to Professional Learning and Development is an edited volume that Kenan Dikilitaş, Christina Ringel and I have prepared for Routledge. It grew out of the ReaLiTea project (Research Literacy for Language Teachers), and it asks what is involved when language teachers read, evaluate, use and produce research.

Status

We submitted the manuscript to Routledge in October 2026.
The publication date, formats and access options will be added to this page as soon as they are confirmed.

Dikilitaş, K., Ringel, C. & Kostoulas, A. (Eds). (forthcoming). Empowering language teachers through research literacy: International approaches to professional learning and development. Routledge.

About the book

Across an introduction and seventeen chapters in four parts, colleagues based in twelve countries and regions look at research literacy from different perspectives: how teachers read and evaluate research, how teacher education can support them in doing so, and what changes when teachers begin to see themselves as part of the research conversation.

The volume grew out of ReaLiTea, an Erasmus+ project that treats research literacy as part of reflective practice for inclusive language teaching. If you would like to see where the book’s ideas started, the post on the ReaLiTea Research Literacy Framework is a good place to begin.

Who is this book for?

The book is written mainly for postgraduate students in language teacher education programmes and for the teacher educators who work with them. Practising language teachers are a second, sizeable readership.

Introduction

Part I: Understanding research literacy: Process and scope

Developing language teacher research literacy through doing action research (Anne Burns)
Using OASIS summaries for emergent research literacy development: What do teachers think? (Emma Marsden & Inge Alferink)
Identity-informed research pedagogy in English teacher education (Raúl García López)
Whose research literacy? Expanding notions of research (Daniel Xerri)

Part II: Developing research competencies in teaching: What teachers need to know

Reading about published professional knowledge research: What, how, and why teachers need to read (Kenan Dikilitaş & Achilleas Kostoulas)
Writing as knowledge production in language education: An ecological framework (Achilleas Kostoulas)
Written reflections and teacher research literacy: Corpus-based insights (Raúl García López, Aysel Saricaoglu Aygan, Christina Ringel & Kenan Dikilitaş)
Using AI as a research collaborator: Implications for language teacher research literacies (Carolyn Blume)
Supporting teacher research literacy through corpus analysis: Phrase frames in OASIS summaries (Christina Ringel, Raúl García López & Aysel Saricaoglu Aygan)
Developing conversation analytic (action) research literacy of pre-service language teachers through transnational collaboration (Ufuk Balaman)

Part III: Learning how to connect research and practice

Theorising practices – Hooked on research? Fostering research literacy in English teachers (Julia Pittenauer & Julia Hüttner)
Developing Sri Lankan teachers’ research literacy through research-based learning (Deepa Ellepola & Judith Hanks)
Integrating research literacy into pre-service language teacher education (İrem Çomoğlu, Başak Çermikli Ayvaz & Kenan Dikilitaş)
Research literacy resources for future-ready English language teaching professionals (Christine Coombe & Lana Hiasat)
The role of action research in the pedagogical development of future language teachers’ research competence (Jolita Horbačauskienė & Milda Ratkevičienė)

Part IV: Language teacher voices in teacher research literacy

(Un)learning knowledge, realities and normalities in education with Roma students: A critical autoethnography (Sofia Tsioli)
Investing in research literacy and scholarly identities: A critical reflection (Yue [Ellen] Zhang)

Editors

Kenan Dikilitaş, University of Bergen, Norway
Christina Ringel, TU Dortmund University, Germany
Achilleas Kostoulas, University of Thessaly, Greece

To maximise readability, the locations of pins are approximate.

Contributors

Inge Alferink (De Montfort University, UK), Ufuk Balaman (Bilkent University, Türkiye), Carolyn Blume (Heidelberg University of Education, Germany), Anne Burns (University of New South Wales and Curtin University, Australia), Başak Çermikli Ayvaz (Vanderbilt University, USA), İrem Çomoğlu (Dokuz Eylül University, Türkiye), Christine Coombe (Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE), Deepa Ellepola (University of Leeds, UK), Raúl García López (TU Dortmund University, Germany), Judith Hanks (University of Leeds, UK), Lana Hiasat (Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE), Jolita Horbačauskienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania), Julia Hüttner (University of Vienna, Austria), Emma Marsden (University of Oxford, UK), Julia Pittenauer (University of Vienna, Austria), Milda Ratkevičienė (Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania), Aysel Saricaoglu Aygan (Ankara Social Sciences University, Türkiye), Sofia Tsioli (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece), Daniel Xerri (University of Malta) and Yue (Ellen) Zhang (Education University of Hong Kong).

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