Dr. J's Blog of ELT Praxis

One of the more influential TESOL Quarterly articles I have read over the past decade was Karen E. Johnson's "The Sociocultural Turn and Its Challenges for Second Language Teacher Education." It helped guide me during the early stages of my doctoral dissertation. I'm revisiting now because it relates to my current position, and I wanted to see if Dr. Johnson's concerns are still valid ten years later. Theory/Practice Versus Praxis From my perspective, the theory-practice dichotomy is still quite prevalent in teacher education. I have entered discussions with our faculty on what should stand at the core of our ESL curriculum, which I perceive as research in applied linguistics or informal research in teaching and learning. I see this more as a applied linguistics-education dichotomy as research is on both ends, but education is more steeped in practice. Johnson recommends praxis as a solution to this dichotomy because it "is more suitable for the prepara...

A few weeks ago, I attended my first American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference.  I first heard about it during my first year at the University of Iowa as some of my colleagues went there.  They described it as a more intimate and research-oriented conference compared to the International TESOL Convention, which is now held immediately after AAAL in the same city.  As a new PhD student, I still preferred the practitioner-oriented TESOL Convention as many of my ideas were in the mindset of a teacher.  I went to a couple TESOL Conventions until my graduate studies and dissertation crowded out any opportunities for professional conferences.  Now as my dissertation is near completion, I got my first opportunity to attend AAAL and it was really worth it. I came to AAAL wearing two hats.  The first hat was my PhD candidate hat.  With it, I attended presentations and roundtables about language & culture and language planning & ...