Towards a digital textbook on research in foreign language pedagogy

Silvia Pokrivčáková, Trnava University, Slovakia, ID Výzvy2017-627;      Abstract: Ideally, there should be a very close connection between educational practice and pedagogical research. Involving school institutions and teachers, researchers should look for the best explanations and find the most effective solutions that could help teachers, teacher trainers, school managers and other subjects to improve their work and set best-practice. However, the reality is somewhat different.

The paper, concentrating exclusively on the area of foreign language education and its research in Slovakia, notices the conclusions of meta-research studies conducted and published by the author between 2006 – 2016. These conclusions claimed that a clear majority of research papers in foreign language education were of a theoretical descriptive (or deductive-descriptive) character when based mostly on literary research of secondary sources. Analytical-interpretative papers which introduce results of primary research are very scarce. The published research conducted by in-practice teachers is missing entirely.

Overcoming the said gap between researchers and teaching practitioners remains one of the most important tasks standing before creators of foreign language teacher training courses in Slovakia. It is also one of the objectives of the project KEGA no. 055UKF-4/2016 funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sport of the Slovak Republic. After introducing the project´s objectives, methods and expected outcomes, the paper presents the philosophy and methodological strategies behind creating a digital textbook on research methods in foreign language education for foreign language teacher trainees (to be issued i 2018).

Key words: teacher training, foreign language education research, teaching research, research methodology, textbook of research