KFUEIT

Khawaja fareed university of engineering

and information technology

Action Research in Pakistani ELT

Classrooms

Submitted To:
Sir Waheed Shahzad

Submitted By:
Sonia Amjad
Reg# Huss18111086

1. Introduction

Action research is known by many other names, including participatory research, collaborative
inquiry, emancipatory research, action learning, and contextual action research, but all are
variations on a theme. Put simply, action research is “learning by doing” - a group of people
identify a problem, do something to resolve it, see how successful their efforts were, and if not
satisfied, try again. While this is the essence of the approach, there are other key attributes of
action research that differentiate it from common problem-solving activities that we all engage in
every day.
Action Research generally involves inquiring into one’s own practice through a process of self-
monitoring that generally includes entering a cycle of planning, acting, observing and reflecting
on an issue or problem in order to improve practice. Action research can have ‘specific and
immediate outcome which can be directly related to practice in the teacher’s own context’ and is
‘an extension of the normal reflective practice of many teachers’ (Wallace, 1991). Within second
language education, action research has usually been associated with the study of classroom
actions rather than addressing social problems associated with language teaching. Action
research for language teachers is ‘an approach to collection and interpreting data which involves
a clear, repeated cycle of procedures’ (Bailey, 2001). Action research is conducted by practicing
language teachers because they themselves are valuable sources of knowledge regarding their
own classroom situations and as a result change can be implemented more credibly because
practicing teachers will find the results more credible and valid for their needs.

Action Research in Pakistani ELT classrooms

A good teacher is always a good researcher and also good learning can be possible only if it is
based on research. Classroom research is very effective tool to recognize the teaching-learning
problems inside the class. It is a systematic process which a concerned or an effective teacher
carries out inside the environment of his classroom to cater new strategies for solving the
problems which he and his students are facing. This process is known as classroom action
research in scientific terms.
In the traditional Pakistani pedagogical setup, teaching and research are treated as two different
things. Action research is a powerful tool that can empower teachers to understand their
students’ needs and they can plan their lessons, activities and syllabus according to this. But
unfortunately our teachers hesitate in doing such type of researches.
Due to the gigantic number of students from grade 6th to B.A. level who are having compulsory
English subject in their courses, it is become more important for our English teachers to arrange
this type of researches in their English classrooms. They need proper guidance and training that
how they can improve their English language teaching needs for their students who will have to
compete the increasing needs of English in their future years. So Action Research is very
important in the ELT scenario of Pakistan.

2. Literature Review

Kurt Lewin, a professor at MIT, first coined the term “action research” in 1944. In his 1946 paper
“Action Research and Minority Problems” he described action research as “a comparative
research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to
social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning,
action and fact-finding about the result of the action”
So (Kurt Lewin, 1946) has been credited with the development of the idea of action research. The
evolution of an action research agenda within education has been influenced by people such a,
Elliott (1991), Hopkins (1985) and others. (Hopkins, 1985) offers good advice on teacher research
when he advocates the development of teacher's professional expertise and judgment.

He provides a basis for the selection of classroom research by teachers:

• the teacher's primary role is to teach and any research project must not interfere with or
disrupt this commitment;
• the method of data collection should not be too demanding on the teacher's time;
• the methodology used must be reliable enough to allow teachers to formulate hypotheses
confidently and develop strategies applicable to the classroom situation;
• the teacher should be committed to the research problem under study;
• teachers must follow ethical procedures when carrying out research; and
• class room research where possible should adopt a perspective where all members of a
school community build and share a common vision.

Definitions of Action Research

“Action research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice
systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research” (Watts, 1985, p.118)
“Action Research is a systematic attempt to gain a better understanding of the educational
process, generally with view to improvement” (Stern, 1983, p.59)
Over the last 20 years discussions of practitioner action research (AR) have become more and
more common in the English language teaching (ELT) literature (e.g. Nunan, 1989; Wallace, 1998;
Edge, 2001; Burns, 1999). AR has also been increasing in teacher training and tertiary education
programs across the world and in some countries it is recommended as a part of educational
policy developments for teacher’s professional development.
Research Question
Why should teachers do Action Research?
Good teachers and instructors don’t use the conventional and typical old teaching strategies.
They are always in search of innovative ideas of teaching to enhance their capabilities and to
increase their students’ interest in learning. When such teachers feel that what they are
practicing in their classrooms is not that much fruitful, they take a new initiative for effective
teaching. For this they do Action Research and it works because it involves the careful monitoring
of planned change in practice. First a decision is taken that what kind of improvement is needed
and then ‘action’ is used as a research tool.

Research tool
They also do it:
• To help them notice what they and their students really do, rather than what they think they
do.
• To get feedback as to the success or failure of what they are doing.
• To help them tailor teaching and learning to their learners and their settings.
• So that they are able to justify the teaching and learning choices they make.
• To increase their knowledge of learning and teaching and become authorities on teaching.
• To become less dependent on decisions made by people who are far away from their
learning and teaching sites, people like textbook writers and school administrators.
• To ensure that they don’t become bored with teaching.
The Action Research Process in ELT
Stephen Kemmis has developed a simple model of the cyclical nature of the typical action
research process. Each cycle has four steps: plan, act, observe and reflect. When we see this
model in the context of ELT we will discuss the each step in the following way:
• PLAN
First of all language teacher will plan a lesson for his students. He will plan the certain things
according to the language strengths and needs of his students.
ACT
In the second step he will act upon according to his planning. He will put his efforts in it.
• OBSERVE
After that he will observe whether his input is productive enough to be able to get required
output from his students regarding to their language skills. If not then what are the shortcomings
in it and how they can be overcome.
• REFLECT
In the end he will get an overall reflection of his work and get a conclusion out of it that whether
his new strategy has worked positive with their language needs and after that use these results in
his teaching practices. In this way he completes the cycle of action research.
Action Research in Pakistan
Our education system demands a vast research due to its unlimited problems and drawbacks. We
critically need Action Researchers in the form of our teachers who observe, plan, monitor and
reflect a positive research in their teaching classrooms for a positive feedback and outcome. The
lack of awareness among our teachers and lack of concern as well as poor managing faculties and
conventional examination system do not provide any space for such researchers.
Some years back the concept of Action Research was totally strange to our teachers but now with
the changing, fast electronic world some of them are aware of this term but only as a paper
knowledge. Teachers holding B.ed, M.ed or ELT degrees have know how of this research and they
do it in their classrooms but not in the systematic or proper way. They observe their problems,
try to tackle them but all they do in an improper way. They do not research professionally as well
as not try to get their work acknowledged or published. So in this way this process remains
limited and not flourished in our country.
Hypothesis
So my hypothesis will be:
“Pakistani teachers are unaware of Action Research process and those who know this are not
interested to follow this or not facilitated to carry on this process”

3. Research Methodology
In order to get the clear picture of Action Research in ELT of Pakistan I will made a questionnaire
for English teachers of different Pakistani schools in which questions related to this research will
be asked to them. I have set the sample value of 100 teachers of English in private school sector.
So in this way I will be able to know that how much percent of our teachers is aware of the action
research process, how many of them are particularly doing this and if not then what are the
reasons behind this: lack of awareness or lack of time and resources.
Participants. The participants of this research will be 100 English teachers from different private
schools of targeted cities.

Research Design.
The research design will probably be qualitative as I want to discuss results
descriptively. I will discuss in detail the problems and suggestions of teachers in my study. I am
planning to arrange personal meetings with some teachers to know about their concept of Action
Research. Along with this I have also designed a questionnaire for English teachers in which
questions related to this research will be asked to them. The questions are to the point and
mostly in the form of YES/NO answers. The set sample value is 100 English teachers of private
sector schools from Sargodha and Gujrat.

Instrumentation. The instruments for data collection are personal and face to face

meetings with some teachers and a questionnaire to be filled individually by every teacher in a
sample.
Procedure. The results will be obtained individually. Each teacher will have to fill the
questionnaire according to his/her knowledge. There will be no group effort probably as I have
mentioned the brief and to the point introduction of my research as well as the introduction of
topic along with the questionnaire.

Limitations. No doubt that the topic of my research is a bit broader in its sense. Due to
shortage of time and lack of resources it is very difficult to reach in every school of Pakistan or to
take sample from every province. For this I have selected only two cities i.e Sargodha and Gujrat
of Punjab, Pakistan because it is feasible for me to conduct research within this area. More over I
have selected only private sector schools. This research can also be conducted among
government schools of Pakistan or specifically in Punjab if anyone wants to go in it

References
Action Research – Introduction (http: //www.accessexellence.org/LC/TR/AR)
Action Research: A way to become Professionals in ELT (http:
//media.ablaonline.org/documentos/ad)
Improving Teaching through Classroom Action Research (http: //academiv.udayton.edu/Essays
forTeachingExcellence/tevo114n7)
Wallace, J. Michael(1991). Action Research for Language Teachers. United Kingdom: Cambridge
University Press.