Research, Evidence and What it Means for Teachers.

One of the key features, and purposes of Language Issues is bridging the gap that can sometimes occur between the research community and teaching practitioners. Sometimes, of course, these communities are the same: for example, in practitioner-led research, or action research projects. More often than not, however, research is carried out by those in the position to do the research, for example university based researchers, government departments, or research companies, rather than those practitioners and managers who might benefit most from it.This creates challenges for all: those practitioners and managers may not have the time, patience or inclination to unpick the often dense and complex language used in research reports. At the same time, however, there is also a need for rigour and thoroughness, and for precision of expression, and this is often at the expense of accessibility and concision.This is a shame, because when you can access research, it can be a deeply informative and useful process, in terms not only of teaching practice, but also an awareness of the contexts in which we work. For many of us, the day to day pressures of the job - planning, teaching, marking, developing resources, not to mention ILPs and other arbitrary management demands - make it hard to prioritise learning about things beyond our immediate practice.It helps us to know about developments in teaching and learning, of course, because for most practitioners this is the meat and drink of what we do. And there is a lot of research going on out there. The divisions between EFL for international students and UK ESOL mean that many of us are not developing our awareness in terms of changes in teaching and learning approaches, discussions about what works and what doesn't are very different outside of our setting. As a starting point for this, I'd recommend looking at Geoff Jordan's CriticalELT blog here: https://criticalelt.wordpress.com/ or former NATCLA national conference keynote speaker Russ Mayne here: http://malingual.blogspot.co.uk/  Both of these blogs are usefully controversial,and make for an interesting place to start in terms of their critical summarising of developments in the wider ELT universe. They both share links to the full research, as well as looking at the key issues arising from those studies.We also need to be looking outside the field of ELT altogether. Again, looking for evidence based developments based on research I would always direct you to the work of the Learning Scientists (http://www.learningscientists.org/blog/) and posts from the Institute of Education at UCL here: https://ioelondonblog.wordpress.com/ which are always useful to read - . Dan Williams, a teacher training lecturer writes a very good blog here as well https://furtheredagogy.wordpress.com/ in which he often draws on developments arsing from research. From a related area to ESOL, modern language teaching, the excellent posts from Gianfranco Conti on his blog, the Language Gym also draw on an evidence-based, research driven basis.There are more formal sources for research access as well: the Education Endowment Foundation (https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/) collect and publish research, and research specific to the post 16 sector is often published (and indeed funded by) the Education and Training Foundation here: http://www.et-foundation.co.uk/research/ which includes a number of ESOL specific practitioner research projects which have been carried out over the last few years. If you are a member of the Society for Education and Training (https://set.et-foundation.co.uk/publications/research/) then you will also have access to a range of research both practitioner-led and academic.Blogs and websites are great, especially in the sense that they do all the heavy lifting, so you don't have to, while at the same time making it possible for you to follow up their summaries with your own detailed reading of the studies. If you should want to do that, the obvious place to start is the trusty library. Different colleges and institutions have different access arrangements, but if you work somewhere with a reasonably sized teacher training department, there should be physical access to books by key thinkers such as Dylan Wiliam and John Hattie, as well as online subscriptions to a range of journals publishing research, including not only Language Issues, but ELTJ  and Applied Linguistics from Oxford and a host of others. If you don't have access to these, then there are other things to try - visit a local university if you can, and ask if there is some sort of adult learning access, or reciprocal arrangement with your own institution's library. There are other tricks you could explore here, but these start to drift into the realms of questionable ethics, if not outright law breaking. As an occasional fix, try asking around in the wider teaching community - there may be someone out there who is currently studying who might download an article for you.Research is always, always, worth engaging with. There is, however, a caveat. All research, all evidence, needs to be viewed critically, through the lenses of your own practice and contexts. This isn't, of course, the same as dismissing things that you don't like the sound of, but rather identifying the extent to which those studies can be applied in your context. In order to do this, we all need to raise our research literacy, and our critical faculties, so that we have the confidence to tackle complex issues, after all, everything "works" in education, because simply engaging with and taking part in some form of learning activity, even hogwash like learning styles, is going to have an effect, if compared to not engaging with learning. It's just that not everything works all the time for everyone.Sam Shepherd. As well as editing the Language Issues journal, Sam is an ESOL teacher and teacher trainer at a college in the north of England.