Language teacher associations as a nexus of research and practice: A collaborative autoethnography

Abstract

Due to what has been identified as an increasing divide between language teaching practice and research, there exists a growing need to identify unique ways of building sustained collaborations between researchers and teachers. This is particularly needed in the context of world languages (WL) teaching in the United States, which faces numerous challenges arising from pervasive macro-level forces at the state and national levels. One promising means of addressing this need is teachers' and researchers’ collective engagement with language teacher associations. Taking a collaborative autoethnographic approach, this qualitative study sought to understand how individuals of varied and overlapping roles (e.g., researchers, WL teachers, teacher educators, students, members and leaders of a language teaching association) perceived the structure and mutually contributory nature of one state level teacher association in the United States. Findings indicated that WL teachers and researchers both contributed to and received contributions from the language teacher association in diverse ways. In addition, the findings revealed how the rationale and type of bidirectional contributions were shaped by the constraints and affordances of the state context. The study illuminates the potential of language teacher associations in mediating and sustaining such a research-practice nexus and collective agency in challenging contexts. Implications for language teachers, researchers, teacher educators, and language teacher associations are discussed.