MA Tesol students have much to gain from the cross fertilisation of skills and knowledge with their PhD colleagues on campus
For students working towards an MA in English language teaching, there is a valuable resource they can access on campus that is seldom advertised on course prospectuses: PhD students doing research in the same applied linguistics or education department.
In the UK many masters-level courses accessed by teachers of English who want to develop their knowledge and skills are offered by universities with impressive track records in ELT-related research.
MA Tesol students can find themselves sharing department corridors with colleagues who are developing specialist knowledge that can enlighten their studies and have direct relevance to their own experiences as teachers.
But course tutors need to actively bring MAs and PhDs together to promote this cross-fertilisation, says Richard Smith, associate professor at the centre for applied linguistics at the UK's Warwick University.
Smith is well placed to evaluate the breadth of research that is going on in higher education. He was co-author of a directory of ELT research undertaken at UK institutions published in 2009 by the British Council and is now finalising an updated version, which is due to be released in April.
The online directory is primarily designed to help researchers track down relevant studies and data from across what has become a exceptionally diverse and internationalised subject. The current edition contains around 1,000 entries from 59 contributing institutions.
In the past ELT research was the preserve of applied linguistics departments, but now it is carried out in a range of language and education faculties. The database serves to restore much needed coherence to the field.
It also reveals how research has become more international, both in its scope but also in its practitioners. Increasing amounts of doctoral-level ELT research at UK institutions is now being carried out by non-UK nationals who are bringing their detailed knowledge of education contexts from around the world back with them on to university campuses. And this is where MA students can benefit.
Smith says MA students can share in what he calls a community of practice from which they can acquire both new knowledge and skills.
To complete most MA courses, students are asked to carry out their own research and write a dissertation. They are supervised by their tutors and given training in research methods, but they can get something more from doctoral-level colleagues.
"The involvement of PhD students is going to help them with that transition into becoming researchers," said Smith.
At Warwick University, he says, the exchange is often informal and can happen in a range of ways.
"MA students might be participants as interviewees in a PhD student's research. That often happens at a pilot or preliminary research stage, to improve the researcher's interviewing skills before they go into the field.
"Sometimes MA students are from the country that the researcher is targeting and they can help with translation or with recording interviews. This kind of involvement gives MA students a better understanding of what research is all about."
Smith says it is not common in the UK for PhD students to teach an MA course so senior staff need to engineer encounters between their students.
They do this at Warwick by inviting PhDs who are doing relevant research to give talks to MA groups. "For example, we have a PhD student who is doing research into content- and language-integrated learning. He knows a lot about it, so the obvious thing is for him to share that with students."
Another forum for contact is research groups, which Smith says are common at UK universities. These are department gatherings to which outside speakers are invited and PhD students talk about their ongoing work.
And once contacts have been made, quite often PhD students provide informal monitoring to their MA colleagues, he says.
"Because the postgraduate community at UK universities is very international, MA students can encounter PhD students who are from their countries and this can create an additional bond," said Smith.
"PhD students are often bringing back to departments knowledge that we – the staff who are British – don't have. That current contact with ELT around the world, that we as course teachers may not have, brings in an added dimension of knowledge and experience."
The current edition of the Directory of ELT Research 2005-08 can be accessed at bit.ly/eltresearch