Editorial

Welcome to issue 81 of Research Notes, in which we present six papers from the English Australia/Cambridge Assessment English Action Research in ELICOS (English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students) Program.

In her thought-provoking introductory article, Professor Anne Burns discusses the notion of transformation and how it relates to action research (AR). She reflects on how the Covid-19 pandemic has led to unexpected transformation in education at institutional and personal levels for teachers and students expecting something quite different in 2020/2021. She compellingly concludes that a tolerance of ambiguity is necessary during the messy business of transformation in order to allow new insights to emerge.

This year’s cohort of action researchers had to respond flexibly to accommodate the need for social distancing. The process of transferring their teaching and training from the classroom to online is captured in the descriptive and reflective papers presented here.

Kirsty Phease’s plan for giving in-class support for teachers had to be adapted to something else entirely. She adopted a pragmatic approach, providing support to teachers, many of whom were unsure with educational technology, as and when they needed it. She found that building a bank of bite-size, shareable multimedia training worked best in the emergency remote teaching environment.

Paul Williams wanted to prepare his students for giving an oral presentation in an online environment. When the systematic scaffolding required for developing language skills proved to be problematic in emergency remote teaching, he used student feedback to develop authentic task-based activities that allowed students to collaborate in online lessons. The result was greater task engagement and more peer support and self-correction. Ashley Starford’s original plan was to focus on students particularly ‘at risk’ of disengagement in their English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing class. However, the pandemic prompted him instead to focus on the engagement of all students, as the move to online learning was new and potentially disruptive to the whole class. The study investigates whether students preferred written or screencast feedback on their writing.

Kerrie Beros and Peter Higgins originally intended to compare blended and traditional approaches to reading and writing, but with the onset of Covid-19 decided to shift their focus to various online delivery strategies. The rich suite of annotation tools at their disposal, and collaborative platforms designed for content creation, enabled them not only to monitor progress, but also to observe both writing process and product.

Enrico Chiavaroli also focuses on online feedback on writing. The switch to online teaching gave him the opportunity to compare student reaction to written feedback given in Cycle 1 of his study to feedback given with screencasting software in Cycle 2. He found positive responses to the screencast medium as well as a decrease in the number of errors, and signals possible future areas of inquiry for feedback using this method.

Jennifer West and Rebecca Matteson’s original plan was to study teachers’ attitudes to blended learning and prepare them for a transition to a new learning system. However, the pandemic meant they had to revise their focus to exclusively online teaching. Their account of teachers adjusting to the new experience of teaching remotely and their willingness to adapt to changing circumstances exemplifies the tolerance of ambiguity cited by Anne Burns in the introductory article, and is a testimony to the resilience of teachers generally.

We hope that you will enjoy this edition of Research Notes. Many thanks to our contributors who made this special edition possible in an unprecedented year.