Can classroom practitioners talk about their practice in academia?

This article shares my pedagogical perspective on conducting research on curriculum, materials, and pedagogy in multicultural classrooms. Rather than presenting my findings, I use the constant rejections of my work as a starting point, urging us to consider the issues with curriculum and pedagogy in academia. In other words, whose voice and practice are we really talking about?

The author: Imagine the world where only the voices of academics are heard, and the voices of practitioners are silenced.

• Reviewer 1: That is not true. Our collaborative work often amplifies teachers’ voice and practice, highlighting their practical knowledge.

• Reviewer 2: Perspective matters. […] The study seems to be somewhat subjective in terms of presenting data analysis and explaining/discussing the findings as well as the author’s writing styles.

• Reviewer 3: After reading the findings, it appears that there is nothing new that the findings contributed to this line of research.

The author “sinks into a banality that is sadness and silence” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 29).

As a Chinese language teacher, I have encountered numerous rejections, of meeting the rigid demands of the “gatekeepers of research” (Rose, 2019, p. 896). Although I am passionate about conducting research on curriculum and classroom materials to promote inclusive education (Yan, 2021, 2022), I question my sense of belonging to the academic community. Over the years, I have failed to articulate my pedagogical practice in the context of Languages Other Than English (LOTE). Looking back, I now realize that my practice might challenge dominant research practices in the field of applied linguistics.

Although my research was framed as a self-study, I engaged in post qualitative inquiry, aligning with the emerging trends in social science research. I am cognizant that this novel approach may not be well-received in language teaching research, due to its lack of a “preexisting, formalized, systematic research process” (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 5). Given its unconventional nature, my work has faced challenges in finding a suitable journal, particularly in the eyes of traditional researchers who favor structured methodologies and generalizability.

• Journal 1: Articles that are based on the author’s personal experiences, reflections or small case studies that have limited generalizability are unlikely to be considered for publication.

• Journal 2: We find your manuscript more relevant for a language journal of which there are plenty.

• Journal 3: The journal prefers studies that are grounded in (second) language acquisition and applied linguistics. Your work is more to do with an important educational issue. I suggest that you submit it to journals such as […].

(After navigating the publication maze, my manuscript passed the initial assessment of several journals. As you know, multiple simultaneous submissions are not permitted. Three years have passed, and my manuscript has been rejected one after another.)

In my practice, I pointed out that a classroom is a dynamic complex place, which requires more than one theory to tackle its daily challenges. It requires classroom teachers to “mobilize as much theory as they can” to understand such complexity (St. Pierre, 2021, p. 5). Thereby, this practitioner inquiry does not rely on rigid methodology, rather, it relies on a teacher’s doing, thinking, reading, and writing with the data and theories. (These statements were not well-received by reviewers.)

As a classroom teacher, the reality is that we do not conduct research from “the beginning” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 112). Although our practice is situated in a specific location, “situated knowledges” emerge from the individual teaching experiences of practitioners. These knowledges are shaped by their past and present interactions with students, the curriculum, materials, and other elements both inside and outside the classroom. In real classroom settings, we do not follow a linear process of collecting data, analyzing it, and then generating their findings. Instead, it is a non-linear process of knowing, thinking, and felt experience, as de Freitas (2012) describes it as a “non-hierarchical network of entangled and knotted loops, folding and growing through multiple sites of exit and entry” (p. 557).

In questioning the concepts of data and data collection, topics that have been extensively discussed in social science, I emphasize that practitioners are often in the process of analyzing the data and generating findings simultaneously. This gives rise to the formation of interference patterns for “the right conditions” (Barad, 2007, p. 74). My research, therefore, is to make sense of curriculum and pedagogy, seeking to open space to “think and live education differently” (St. Pierre, 2004, pp. 284–285). In this regard, this practitioner inquiry involves the use of innovative methods and defines trustworthiness in terms of a theory-oriented validation process.

• Reviewer 4: the author draws complex and sweeping conclusions from what seems like very little evidence. […] I recommend rejection.

In the real world, we need to consider the “very notion of what will count as ‘data’, and of our relation to those data” (MacLure, 2013, p. 660). While I am aware that some academic researchers have taken posthumanist perspectives in the field of language research, they still utilize conventional data analysis methods. In a materialist ontology, MacLure (2013) warns that data should not be viewed as an indifferent mass awaiting our analysis or coding systems. Instead, data has its own ways of revealing itself to us. In practical terms, rather than seeking to understand complexity through reductionism, classroom practitioners often examine data in a non-linear and iterative manner on a daily basis: through observation, interaction and embodied knowing.

To this end, I may have failed to disseminate my pedagogical practice, but I have succeeded in creating curriculum materials that engage culturally diverse students. Despite academic scholars advocating for inclusive spaces that foster transformative praxis, I struggle to find one that nurtures the intellectual growth of practitioners in language research. Salvo (2021) emphasizes that not only published work influences scholarship’s development and innovation. He advocates for openness and transparency as a blueprint for reimagining knowledge production, urging us to “share fearlessly” (p. 1).

The author: The published work always bears the name of the writer. If academic researchers disagree with this pedagogical perspective, they are more than welcome to write a counter-narrative for critique, rather than resorting to “phony positionality, methodolatry, ethical cleansing, participatory posturing, and symbolic citation” in the dissemination of research (Macfarlane, 2022, p. 140).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dave Yan

Dave Yan is a classroom teacher in a secondary school setting in Australia. The pursuit of a PhD degree comes from the realization that without it, he would be unable to access the necessary resources, guidance/collaboration, and funding to effectively engage in the knowledge production. As a practitioner and minority, he challenges the master narrative in educational research. By employing creative methodologies, his work highlights the significance of ‘situated knowledges’ and contributes to the production of a minor literature.