Common forms of participatory research in applied linguistics (e.g., action research) typically emphasise the importance of maximising participant involvement. They recommend approaches in which the 'researcher' (or rather, the participant with academic expertise), if involved at all, adopts a facilitation, supervision or mentoring role, and the participants (e.g., language teachers) are encouraged and expected to lead on, and investigate topics broadly, or wholly, of their own choosing (e.g., Dikilitaş, & Griffiths, 2017; Smith, 2020). This initiative to maximise participant involvement is logical, commendable, and empowering to participants, but it does potentially limit the methodological range and scope of participatory investigation, making it more challenging in projects with certain restrictions or conditions concerning topic focus, research question, methodology or role obligations. Such projects are arguably the norm in applied linguistics academia, rather than the exception, including, for example, those involving conditional funding and doctoral research projects.
In this presentation I will argue that a wider range of research methodologies can be made both more equitable and more effective without necessarily compromising on aspects of methodological rigour if they involve participants to a degree (i.e., if they are 'partially' participatory), and that such practices are of increasing importance and relevance in cross-cultural research, particularly studies that involve researchers from the global North and participants from the global South. I will provide a clear practical example of this from my own PhD project – a case study of English language teacher expertise in India (Anderson, 2021, forthcoming) – illustrating how a case study research design can be adapted to involve participants meaningfully and equitably from the recruitment phase, through research design and topic focus, data collection and analysis. I will provide an example of how participants' voices and expertise can be represented in the outputs of the project, alongside those of the researcher. I will also argue that, because of the wider range of opportunities that they offer, partially participatory projects are not necessarily inferior to fully participatory (participant-led) ones, providing justification for the approach adopted is made clear.
While this approach seems promising and advantageous in a number of ways, I will also offer a critical caution, reflecting on how partially participatory approaches may require a felicitous combination of methodology and topic to work effectively, and invite the audience to reflect on similar challenges in their own research.
References
Anderson, J. (2021). Eight expert Indian teachers of English: A participatory comparative case study of teacher expertise in the global South [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Warwick Publications Service and WRAP. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/159940/
Anderson, J. (forthcoming). Teacher expertise in the global South: theory, research and evidence. Cambridge University Press.
Dikilitaş, K., & Griffiths, C. (2017). Developing language teacher autonomy through action research. Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, R. (2020). Mentoring teachers to research their classrooms: a practical handbook. British Council.
