Selection of Research Paradigms in English Language Teaching: Personal Reflections and Future Directions
Abstract
Learning and teaching English in the age of globalization, digitalization and diversifications has constantly challenged our current understanding about the learners. In order to maximize the effectiveness of education, we need to continuously innovate our curriculum, pedagogy, assessments and evaluation. Research has helped this continuous innovation by providing key insights about students and teachers’ demands and needs and then shaping the strategies, policies and innovations in education. This paper attempts to explain this phenomenon from my perspective. First, I will provide a brief review of research paradigms and dominant research paradigms in English Language Teaching (ELT), followed by my personal reflections on what research approaches I followed, why I selected them and what procedures I followed. The discussion on my selected approaches and what I learned from my research will also be shared together with my opinion on the possible directions for future research in ELT.
Keywords: research paradigms; mixed methods; methodologies; English Language Teaching; multilingual writers, pre-service teachers
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